melting icarus

Awkward Committee Memo

2008-03-04T16:41:00.000-08:00

here is a new awkward we’ve made some minor changes improvements you’ll see so you’ll have to suspend the old one just very briefly you’ll see while we tweak it and touch it up you see we’ve removed something from the list gyrating your hips in the seated position is no longer awkward we hope you like what we’ve done for the new awkward lets you work on your abs while you work on the phone or the computer it will feel different at first but you’ll appreciate it soon enough you won’t even look odd or ridiculous when you spill your coffee you see this is the beauty of what we’ve done for you and don’t worry about your friends your co-workers your employees your boss your kids your husband your wife we’ll tell them too

Here we are: the oscillatory universe

2008-02-24T17:56:00.000-08:00

and we’ll be actors (you
behind the two-way mirror
disturbance-shell shield)

we’ll show (you)
gods birthed of mortals
dement and maim
toward total clarity
(it finally comes
in the unifying)

we’ll vomit generationally mutant
vernacular to weep our organic
penicillin-choked trajectory from the womb

we’ll play symptomatically
lust
(disguise it
because you can’t kill
it—kill it)

we’ll flood imperial genghis through asia
and tremor radial nitrogen concussions with sony lips
howling the mars volta’s exacted dissonance

we’ll horde severed lashes and
nails—nails harvested by ivory teeth
defected from the body
collected in overstruck matchboxes

and we’ll catalogue the finite
slaughter of cleft hoofed
seconds
(until vermillion rain)
until vermillion rain
voids our apocryphal epic

until the suffocating curtain smoothes
over spent piles of skin

(until silhouettes
of the disturbance-shell audience
rise in applause
stretching smiles around cigars)

we’ll vanish
and be born reinflated
(for ever once more)

Sunday Night: Snow

2008-02-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

The safety reverse beeping of a plow
outside usurps my alarm clock’s function
today, but only by a few blinks as I unsew
my eyes to find the splotchy ceiling
hasn’t moved. I silence one alarm but not
the other who
beckons a peek outside
at the nightly weather’s work. (I see a
familiar view almost completely erased
and a struggling plow
attempting to undo the white.)

Monday tie these padded gloves tight
cause this fight’s not for real. still.
warm my footwork
on the radiator, bouncing weight
from toe to toe to toe in my corner:
jab, cross, weave,
jab.

Two for the show:
I’m shadow boxing with the devil
again, a game called education,
and finally I think
I might be winning.
slowly.

Monday depress icy metal to trip the
lock, and lay a shoulder to this
unwilling door shoving into
the mute grace
of a waking city
plummeting upward through suspended snow.

the dream

2008-02-04T21:48:00.001-08:00

It was december I think when
the last star escaped the
night, once ornately jeweled
with splintered glass bones
now evaporated and
swallowed like each groping human
breath torn from the sky: the last star escaped
forgotten in the permanent electric day. It was

december I think when we bundled
against paralyzing bonechill and
flooded outside into the numb
petrified winter to watch as they
probed that narrow remnant of
darkness, somehow still lofted above,
with fiercely volted searchlights
blaring wattage upward toward
that mute cosmic graveyard with
blinded extinguished star carcasses
dangling drugged from copper wire nooses. December

forced us to tracheotomize those weak-hearted,
alarmed at the heavens’ exposed mutilation,
to spare them from bolstering the comatose.

airplane

2008-01-31T14:38:00.000-08:00

I woke up thirty-two-thousand feet into the sky.
The air is thin up here
I’m told; I don’t know for sure, I mean
it doesn’t look thin not that I would
know what to look for,
and I’ve never actually felt the air
all the way up here, but
I’ve felt the air down there and some of that
might have been up here once;
maybe it changes though
when it falls all that way

The air is thin up here
I’m told, but people still come here a million times a day and sometimes,
when I hear someone explain how it works,
how all of this metal and flesh can climb so high,
I think I understand it for a while
and maybe I do,
but if I had a gun pressed to my ear and some psycho
handed me twenty-thousand rivets
and an acre of sheet metal
and four jet engines
and two-hundred-fifty tray tables
and thirty cans of Canada Dry ginger ale
and four-hundred complementary bags of peanuts,
and he told me that my life was at stake,
not even then would I be able to tell him how to make a Boeing,
and I would probably instead see my eighteen years flash before my eyes

if that really is what happens; it hasn’t happened to me at least
yet,
but one time when I was six
or seven, and I was walking on top of the monkey bars,
(not satisfied with swinging from one to the next by my arms
like everyone else,
but instead balancing above on my feet,)
we lost cabin pressure, and I teetered on one foot for a second,
there were no oxygen masks that fell from above to rescue me
that may not inflate although oxygen is flowing,
but in front of my eyes
fell the most vivid image of my funeral
that I hope I never see again. I remember it though,
I’ll probably never forget.

But maybe no one person knows exactly
how to build a seven forty seven anyway,
so I can ignore my ignorance for six more hours
and three-thousand more miles
until it doesn’t matter again,
until I can press my forehead to the
frostbitten, quietly shuddering, double-plastic window
and through it see home shimmering
below in the dark: that endless twisting grid of orange dots and red dots,
and bright yellow dots, and some blue, and green, and white,
until I can watch the flow of head-lights toward me,
until I can watch the flow of brake-lights away,
because then I will know
I will be with you soon,
and with my forehead to the double-plastic,
I won’t be able to ignore the grin that wants my lips,
and I won’t be able to ignore the unrest that has won my toes,
and I won’t be able to ignore the space between my right shoulder and my neck
and wrapped between my arms and against my chest
that has wanted you for seventy-nine nights spent
awake in bed waiting patiently for sleep
staring at the splotchy white-washed ceiling wondering why you are not here too,

and I want nothing more than for you to fill that space,
and I want nothing less than for it to be perfect,

because I don’t know for sure,
and I’m pretty sure that no one ever will,
but for whatever reason, through the incomplete
perception of life that I seem to have
drawn in the moments I’ve spent awake
and crystallized in the moments I’ve spent asleep,
however misguided or incorrect it might be,
somehow I think that the life that I’m living right now
might be the last one I’ll get,
and that
is the only reason I’ll ever need
to try to get it right
this time through.

four

2008-01-31T12:02:00.000-08:00

this hour is my favorite,
my favorite hour of the day:
this hour of the night
when the light
the light that reflects a world,
a moment,
each moment through my cornea
into my head
the light that reflects those colors,
those quiet shapes of puddles,
those yellow shapes of fallen leaves,
of damp grass shimmering,
of slippery cobblestone,
of a trampled starbucks cup,
a critically dented coke can,
a crumpled bus-ticket,
a missed shoe,
a duncan donuts receipt,
(all of which I can trust are truly there
even without reaching out,
reaching to touch them
because right now, in this silent hour,
this hour when most daily things
have nightly left
and those that remain have grown still,
right now the still shapes
are as true as they’ll ever be
without anyone to distract
from their presence,
from their consequence,
and they have never been the same before,
and I am the first person to ever see them,
now,
in this hour)

and all of the light that reflects those damp,
those slippery, those dented, crumpled shapes,
into a grinning eye,
or two,
(no more than two at this hour
this hour of the day, of the night)
reflects through a cornea, toward a retina,
(or two, two of each, they’re mine
now) bathed in the hour;
all of the light comes only
from shifting traffic signals,
from hooded street-lamps,
from buzzing orange fluorescents on walls,
from one rushed car (heading home)
or two, sometimes a plane, a star
or two,
and the moon.
there’s one moon waiting, silent, above
(and one star
or two,
no more than two though
for the buzzing fluorescents
and the hooded street-lamps
and the shifting traffic signals
have extinguished the rest,
purging the night’s sparkling nuance)

two other moons follow me
floating between shiny black windows,
windows climbing shiny black sky-scrapers,
(windows climbing only to the top,
no further than that into the night,
no further toward the stars,
toward the two stars in the sky,
because up there, it’s lonely,
up there where you can’t reach out
to touch the world that you once thought
you once knew
and with only one star for company
or two,
no more than two though
at this hour.
I like it down here anyway,
at this hour)

down here where one moon waits above
two moons follow in jet black windows.
one more moon wades in the river
(cross a bridge; it’s there
wavering, wobbling)
one moon hovers in every puddle,
and one moon on my watch-face
(dancing with the noise of my wrist,
that chronic human trembling:
trembling because we are alive
trembling in awe of life
trembling because we still know how to tremble
because some of it is still a mystery)
and all of the moons find my eyes,
(not all at once though.)

and upwards there is a great clock
throned on a great tower
(staring straight ahead,
not at me but far above)
that rivals the moon in brightness
rivals the moon in roundness
and is most often victorious,
victorious in this rivalry
except for one night in a month
one night when the moon is different
(still the same glowing, yellowing white
not more or less beautiful,
but strictly more symmetrical
and maybe even more radiant; tonight
the moon has won)

and in this hour of defeat,
the clock points with its slower hand
to its left (to my right)
and rather downward as well,
pointing downward, far downward from its
tall perch on a great tower
toward where it became what it is now
toward where other hours (not like this hour)
were devoted to creating it (the clock)
and then installing it into a new home
but that was such a long time ago
and now twice a day the clock reaches up
toward heaven, toward the two stars,
as if it wanted something more
than what we gave it,
as if it wanted to be in that lonely place,
with the one star,
or two,

but not in this hour, no.
in this hour it points downward
toward creation
in thanks for its home, for its being;
in this hour it is loyal
this rare hour
out of many hours disloyal

not like the moon,
the constant moon,
the glowing yellowing white moon who,
since being wrenched from the earth,
wrenched from its home,
from its father, its mother,
has traveled a wide path five billion times
around the sun in pursuit of its past,
even when we leave it in the dark:
staring straight back to where it came from,
staring toward its home, (my home too,)
toward the green and blue and brown and white;
five-billion years is a long time I guess
but not long enough to forget some things;
its called gravity I think,
but I’ll call it love.

and the moon might follow us, in love
for five billion more slow orbits, but I think
someday before then, it will return home,
reunite with the rock that it was made from,
some other day maybe, in some other hour,
but not this hour

this hour: my favorite hour
when zebra crossings and benches,
street-signs and sidewalks
were made for only one person (not two)
because at this hour, it’s all of it for me.

and at this hour, there’s only one place left to go.
it’s home, and it’s been waiting for me;
I’d never think to abandon it for too long,
and this hour won’t be the same before long
when moonset surrenders night to day
and daily things creep back into the light
for the moon is going home too,
slowly. someday he’ll make it though;
It’s called gravity I think, but
in this hour, I’ll call it love.

pigeons followed suit

2008-01-31T11:56:00.000-08:00

maybe power lines weren’t only meant
to connect our homes to the plant,
to warm or cool our silverware and our couches
or supplement nightly the moon’s poor quality lighting,

maybe they were meant to replace the trees
or maybe to begin politely
quietly
phasing them out:
providing better functions with less property,
power lines
with simple agreeable predetermined dimensions,
not like twisting encroaching rebellious trees,
trees who used to satisfy
with their beauty
and their shade.

we had probably also forgotten
their silent integrity
integral to the constant living breaths we sucked from the sky
and to cleansing the exhaled exhaust we bellowed
in thanks.

but one day, after a hushed series of murders
each by axe,
we had refabricated truncated tree carcasses with metal,
and once the lifeless prostheticized bodies were replanted,
stiffened spines buried upright
in foreign soil that used to be home,
we could cross our arms and bask in such ingenuity:
here was the future extended taut surging above us,
here was improvement on an obsolete machine,

here was greatness they said,
just wait and you’ll see.

no one noticed
as the rigid idols sunk brilliantly into dictated posture
that the earth could no longer embrace amputated feet.
it longed for that sacred bond
with toes that dug deep,
toes that groped and held tight as mountains and as long,
toes that wove downward
and clung to their cherished home
whose tenant now lay fiercely abused
for the new order of linear trees
each who could no longer grant us beauty or shade,

and we had probably forgotten also
that silent integrity,
which had since deadened
and left their hollow insides sterilized
forfeiting ancient sanctified function to pressures of modern necessity.

now the power lines brought us
that light for which we were made to think
there was such a need,
so that we could stay wide eyed and wakeful
into the darkest blankest deadest hours of morning
and then hide in dreams
long after the sun had daily waxed
daily beckoning us to reanimate our sleeping corpses
daily radiant so that we might come alive once more.

now the power lines brought us streaming cable television
preprogrammed entertainment,
preinundated with advertising,
prepaid with plastic,
streaming into our homes
for whenever we wanted to choose one channel to watch
and ninety-nine not to
streaming into our aching bloodshot eyes
streaming into our limp parted mesmerized lips.

now the power lines made us cool when we were warm
and made us warm when we were cool.
now the modern buzzing totem pole monoliths loomed
over mute residential asphalt streets mingling awkwardly
with their more green,
more beautiful,
less evolved,
less useful cousins,

and by now we had probably forgotten
that silent organic integrity.
happily though, there would be fewer of the old trees soon,
which would make things more comfortable for everyone
in the end.

and soon convened a conference of politic pigeons;
crows and doves attended too.
they cooed and croaked and cawed that day deliberating
until finally the pigeons’ verdict decreed
the new version of tree a superior perch to the old,
equipped with safely coated connective wires
and in convenient view of the nightly soaps.

so, soon following suit,
birds too made the switch
from the disorderly leaf ridden pariahs
to the symmetrical electrical
pylon-trees,
for now they could perch all in row uniform
rather than scattered about
in shattered rank
amidst gnarled flailing limbs and irksome green snags.
a flock’s quick departure used to mean a confused flurried riot;
now a pigeon’s purr instantly incited
an infallible evacuation.

here was greatness they said,
just wait and you’ll see.

and when bounding repercussion overtakes the present
and scolds us for forgone foresight,
we will learn to want a new kind of farm:
one that we had never wanted before,
one that would not grow cabbages or carrots or corn
but instead breed our lungs’ most cherished produce:
that ephemeral airborne sustenance forfeit and forgotten
for this is the age of the planet-wide dendrocide;
this is the age of the power line trees
where oxygen farms sprawl on graveyards of forests
to supplant that sacrificed silent integrity:
that sweetest sap we sucked dry
from a once generous sky.

here was greatness they said,
just wait and you’ll see.