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Look at my fiefdom! / “A pale gray tower / Certainly, useless but” / See its beautiful works, / “By the drydock of a dry river, / The gods have all drank up” my works. [Curtainfall. A stinking thing eats an ear grown from infertile popcorn / Hybrid / By the frontright window of a Subaru Outback.] I was a little boy and I split my hands a’ bean / Countin’ “sharp those callused hands / You’ll cut my eyes out David” / And worked my magics. //
Yes I worked so hard! / “And yes you’ll slice my eyes” / See the grayglass windows [Yes] “the grasses in the margins springing onions” / Shards like eyes / I blink / I’m blinking “ought it be forest?” / No more tears, no more tears / Love — [It wets its eyes, emanating burning trashgrass odor, the crabgrass cuts its legs, newtbites. It ought not be an it.] Not until the work’s undone / “Which dirt can never be.” //
A man [Nightfall. David Harridan, forty-five, manages a small investment firm. A man and woman come in on the weekends, the man stays through Wednesday, the woman is there on Thursday and Friday. This repeated with many men and women. We move boxes all day, I-t-t-t —] froze in the officepark in / January “such was your mercy.” / His body was like / A bear / A dog / Something stinking / “Something’s got to give, David” / It grew hair as the ants crawled in / He sought my warmth / He did not find it.
Perhaps a fiefdom is useless / Without proper subjects “and grass grows in the lot.” / These cars are not enough / “Driving through as herds of buffalo”/ My employees not enough “a musk deer bearing fawns” / My children not enough. / My teeth are long and sharp / “They cut my eyes” I bite / I bite / Oh hear me bite. / Perhaps I ought to be in the fields again. [Hair underneath a nose and red in the eyes. He signs papers, watches the eyes of his children. I am watching out the window. After that bedfall.]
Twitter: @poetryaccnt1518
