FOOL’S GOLD

The sun is setting. There is nothing new. Dust on your hands. Hawk in the air. The sun is setting. This is something old. Grass between your lips. Meat on the road. The sun is setting. It forms an emotion. A shape in mind. Dark on the hills. The sun is setting. Eyes squinting in thought. Cars afar humming low. The radio broken still. The sun is setting. You walk inside it. Nobody is watching you. This will not end.

The past, they say, is under our feet. It is what holds us up. That is why we cannot get to it again. The future, on the other hand, is always within reach. See that old sign out there? What you see of that sign is the presence of this moment. What you don’t see of that sign—its hidden back, the contour of a bullet hole, minor erosions from the wind—that is the future. All you have to do is get there. Any moment.

There are layers of looking here: out, across, in. A vast beauty seems to rest on the edge of intimate dilapidation. That mountain explains nothing. This dead thing in the gravel fascinates mute. We don’t ask a mountain to explain itself. When the objects here rust, we don’t think it unfitting. When the woman on the bed turns to face the drawn motel curtain, we understand the landscape. It moves again.

What is it that brought you here? Who is it that left you here? How is it that you came to be familiar with these parts? Sun cuts down the fissure’s blond weft. Could it be told why the people here don’t leave? Kneel in this hard dirt so you can smell its traveling. Are these parts a whole of some kind? We came this way to get to somewhere else. The Coke machine is on the outside. I come here whenever I pass through.

There must have been a voice out here. Someone across the untouched contours. Likely it was a song. How does one fill a space like this? Certainly not with thought. One can think into these hills for more years than they can live and the wind will still carry it looser than sand. But now there are roads here and places to eat, to fill up. But that’s just us. The only thing that gets full here is the moon, or these ashtrays.

THE HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS OF MAPLE STREET

A red curtain

Of hair

Parted by air

A yellow lighght overlooking

The white bed black

Cat lingering like flora

And the muscular promise

That inhabits

One’s daily collision

With exteriority

The successive

Moment’s horizon

Radial, glittering, already

Talking it out

As these cells divide

Myriad, queasy, suffusing

The body with chatter

The bedspread sun

The boy surges through

Into the fingers that

Terminate in a man

Mitigating darkness

Or reveling from nerve

To bone, to know

One has only to move

As the palpitations continue

Caressing a wreck

Of resurfacing affect

Reggaeton in a sudden

Street level throb

The airplanes lately

Bothersome

Like a miracle

That keeps heaving

Its gasoline feedback

Sonata for late

Millennia or all

These nihilists

On parade yet

Just to wake

On Maple

Is to be pervaded

By a slow slow

Reverence

And even the birds

Harvesting bones

On Nostrand

Squawk and dodge

To the rooftops

With simple glee

Church bells turning

The streets on

Or resetting one’s ear

To the difference

Between the shower

With and without

Its dampening body

To dampen the slack

Water radio static

The daysong streets

Wrenching arias

To arise commonly

In this liquid poison

Air we deem

American spirit

Knuckles split

By a dancing praise

“For Reverend Green”

And the revelations

Of friendship

This collective thud

Against the nothing

That forever

Bares its straw teeth

Against the obviousness

Of wonder

Which dutifully waits

For sense

To arrive, to blare

Here is easy

As is this

Obscene shrinking

Into wealth or

A circumspect success

When there is sun

Sustaining the earth

Amid its unthinkable

Threat, heat, there

Is only a song

To be sung by friends

Beginning again

In the middle

Having just woke

A shape in the process

Of becoming

Something even

More unknown

As the fire trucks

Rumble past

And another airplane

Hoarsely roars

Its yawed acknowledgment

Of America

Her swimming

Pools and patchwork

Farm geometry

A kettle awhistle

In the kitchen

Where a woman

You love makes

Breakfast nude

And a fine red hair

Grows on her arms

Which crack an egg or

Pour the milk

State changes everywhere

In this glowing penumbra

Of abundance and melt

Take a second

Look into the of

That is the air

Around you

And tell me

It isn’t enough

from THE HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS OF MAPLE STREET

A curtain of hair

Parted by air

A yellow lighght overlooking

The white bed black

Cat lingering like flora

And the muscular promise

That inhabits

One’s daily collision

With exteriority

Each moment’s horizon

Radial, glittering, already

Talking it out

As the cells divide

Myriad, queasy, suffusing

The body with chatter

The bedspread sun

The boy surges

Into the fingers

Which terminate a man

Mitigating darkness

Or reveling from nerve

To bone, to know

One has only to move

As the palpitations continue

Caressing a wreck

Of resurfacing affect

Reggaeton in a sudden

Street level throb

The airplanes lately

Bothersome

Like a miracle

That keeps surging

Its gasoline feedback

Sonata for late

Millennia or nihilists

On parade

Just to wake

On Maple

Street is to

Be pervaded

By slow, slow

Reverence

And even the birds

Harvesting bones

On Nostrand

Squawk and dodge

To the rooftops

With simple glee

Church bells turning

The streets on

Or resetting one’s ear

To the difference

Between the shower

With and without

Its dampening body

To dampen the slack

Water radio static