Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Twenty Summer 2009 |
HOW TO VACATION IN A COUNTRY AT WAR Matthew Keuter 1 One way I know is to become the coffee pot below the office calendar, this is better than becoming the filing cabinet the coffee is stirred by everyone alike with their tongue. You might also consider becoming the calendar but in bright-field illuminations of vitamin C crystallites you can't feel the wind naked as a horse, fill its chest over the wave & bellow the deep black electric night at sea. Be the wind then or become the wave inspired by your former self the wind(with the moon that is inside you &) inside the wave even the wave that is sleeping inside the eye of the shark closed within the wave asleep inside the eye of the storm & the desire inside the shark inside the wave is the prehistoric desire within us to master the seas with our desire(& if not desire cowardice desire)to escape the terrified city of our employment(too early the hospice of our desire). * We Numerous we giddy before the bridge crossing into wilderness above the river drawing all its long face to pucker & kiss the mouth of the sea. We numerous as shark's teeth as fragile, as easily replaced, as irreplaceable, as much killer as much priest as likely to die in our sleep as much owing to a mouthful of water as much the face beneath the surface of veil, as much the heart veiled in its dark guise of infidelity, as much the mourning heart in its veil of levity as much the right cowboy as the right dude whipping the sick horse drawing its carriage through the sponge of exhaust wiping down Park West the one that looked you dead in the face with the fly drowning in its eye & whispered shoot the fly. * & & if the fly like the moon can escape the eye can the wave cheat the moon? can love reverse the tide of familiarity? can a bullet be fashioned of opposite intent to enter the eye that blinks in the rifle's scope? can the tongue return to the mouth of the silent grave to command its maker to sit like children before the fire in a country at war? |
About Matthew Keuter |