War

The Muses

Terpsichore

The Men-Think
the debris
she left was gathered,
given implication, and
a faction.
A war
on memory,
this war.

Shrapnel,
a word floats
a parade
inside
a bandaged head.

Calliope

The fear is coming back
into particles of light.

Erato

In December light
Simple little glue, blue flies,
eight days to get
straight, I'm
waiting on Tuesday.

We muse upon
their liberty, a ruse
of sovereignty, careless
in our salvation dispenser.

Clio

The noisemakers wandering up
a Persian landscape.

Six thousand one years
back to Zoroaster,
twenty six point four degrees
twisted
against the sun.
Six thousand Year Ones
back to Zoroaster,
and there she stands
by the color TV.

Urania

What half would I have been?
The sphere is coming
back into particles of light.

Polyhymnia

The Mother nurse, she is standing
by the color TV. From
where I am looking,
air is nowhere,

but there is
air in everything.

Euterpe

The head
is a receptacle, the mind
is a wire, listen
and you will figure out
why: There
is where I am from,
and then There is Me,
and then There is Everything.
I heard the egg screaming
the secret name of God.

Melpomene

I am listening
to the desert sea.
The sound is pieces
of conflict sculpted
on transportable
insurance beds.
Half-lives of radiation TV.

I wonder which half I would have been?

Thalia

Where were my welds
and my mounds, my wounds
of Vietnam? Why did Americans
not bring home a poetry
of the mountains
and quiet rivers? Why was it
only the wreckage and Eagles?
It flies under me,

a war
on memory,
This war.
A war on memory,
this war

too will end. The fatherless
will look to the land,
not for a connection
but a conviction, a plea
bargain. They will be
dog bodies of the August moon,
a yield of the American sundown.
Game mercenaries lying crosswise
In the vast stage of history, epitaphs
for opinionated pandering.
Under the empires
their youth will be providence
but limbless, a viral video
easily forgotten
against the lineage of oil sacks
and moneyrooms.
Will they see their own mind, in a prison,
eyes lidless under a forgetting sky?
We are born turning revolutions.
The mirrors give us the illusion
of time as moving forward.
The interruptions in the lineal
system betray the circles we spin
until darkness becomes light,
everywhere, mirrors,
everywhere, the face of God.
And when we become blind,
we live, with our fear,
in the past, or we live
with our fear in the past.

Our Close Distance

When will I come home
And see that lamp in
Your flickering room?

What will you do, home
From the war? Sunlight
And summer ore, or
Bus stop and creeping
Mourning through the night before?

What will you do,
Bandaged in your skin?

I will drink lampwax
And leave terracotta dust,
My faith and wonder withering in
Shadows on couches and grass arenas.
Until a semblance of my substance
Emerges, resembling enough,
Just enough encaustic dust,
So you may trust your memory,
Unlock the door, and let me in
from this close distance.

Orpheus After the War, v2

Orpheus after the War
was a thought upon the Beach,
A veteran with a dispense and a reach
In to your dress, love is gone.
If there were no war,
Milk would drift down your sorrow,
Lifted from skin graft
And inhaled
Under the dandelion sky.

Our early March was
Evergreen coated in snowflakes,
aching backwards
And arcing sideways,
You moved like glue
On a window screen.

Where can I go now
But to the memory of
Driftwood hands stained
In this comfort of ink?

Goddess, in a psalm kennel of adrenalin.

Water foam shoreline
Inhales the roots of wood,
Your arms,
A corpse among
Vibrations: the sound of the ocean.
Lonely din and hum
of memory,
Cold in a crowded waterfront.
Blackbird sky, gasoline eyes,
A city of crowds
And magnetic density,
A shelter for warmth tonight,
soup made of hot dogs
and leftovers.
Homeless and waiting
for Thanksgiving kindness.