"silicates" poems
Hello Chicago
Flat carpet-town of corn meal
steel spears at the northern junction
of Cahokia and some unknown dream
No lillies grow here sir,
no tulip fields
though there are many Dutch
a little up north
Wisconsin, dontcha' know?
Family blood rains through the Chicago river
named of the blood of a slain tribal wonder
wanders
with the roaming buffalo
I sat at the top of Sears
(Willis)
Tower and peered into the foggy distance
and made out the shores of Michigan
through Indiana
the leftover rains of a continental freeze
churned the earth to butter and carved the arteries
and bowels
of today's earthly body
And when we drove in from O'Hare
in the late hours on incessant stoplight highways
counting down the streets
thinking maybe they'll go all the way to
Mississippi
just a long row of
Concrete
I saw the brick tower
of a decrepit Frito-lay plant
where they cooked their corn and potato
into succulent
can't eat just one
little snacks
for the whole of america
to enjoy in backyard barbecues
and convenience stores
and grocery outlets
All across the planet
Now with the trucks they come and go
up to and whizzing past Chicago
on to greener states with greater relief
with hills and lakes and winding streams
Different sections of the sculpture
Cities eroding into the pleasant coasts
quaking and breaking into tiny stones
a monumental David
cracked in the gallery
bird **** corroding the silicates
unpolished and immortal
words
Chicago!
oh you mighty city you
built from sod and sweat and dew
of new morning
I see your towers
you dreamer, you
But your towers are in Dubai,
and Shanghai
now
The world moved on
and forgot everything about
that magnificent mile
burned to make you earn
new toys and fancy things
from far beyond your winding river streams
But you didn't die
amazing, how much they tried
to rust you out
to bleed you dry
no,
Chicago,
you keep your ***** rivers flowing
all the way to the Mississippi
flanked by modern Roman concrete
all the way to the great green sea
out into the puddle that surronds
the Amerigo
Chicago
don't you give up that river dream
Jun 14, 2018
Jun 14, 2018 at 3:26 PM UTC
The air is burly
trees harvest soldiers on the line
combines, threads, manure, life--
A whole world lost amidst the flats
Saplings are the next season's
Almonds, Apples, Dates,
Waiting for food shelves and stockrooms
packed in banana boxes and given a place
They will find the plates of capitol city dwellers
They will be engorged far away from their origins
The Sierra-- oh the great plutonic mass
They are grey from age, peppered with white whiskers of snow
They are asking to be known as the interior
Pilgrims who traveled over their spines, seeking these fertile swampland
Now airstrips and dirigibles
The edges of clouds on the valley, the deserts and the mountains like folds of a book
they crackle in the sun and the skin of the earth shrinks in its gaze
Migratory birds dance in the fields, the lowly clang of bell
Bleached american flags tell us this is the land
The land of things and endless breadth
This is only California, but the majesty of it
a gem valley encased by the rocks, in silicates
A roaming place for cows, wanderers, farmers, dreams
Where the only edge of things is the mountains, saying
-Climb me, surmount me, lay me under your deeds-
Dec 14, 2018
Dec 14, 2018 at 12:26 PM UTC
Meteors are made of three components
Iron, nickel and silicates
You are made of something simpler
Sea salt, angst and
Tenderness
Yet my fingers always fall short
Of reaching you
But if you did ever let me caress the space
Between us
Not just in our lips
You’d come crashing down
Bursting in a kaleidoscope of flames
Orange and silver sparks flying
And I would still hold on
Even if you take me with you.
Apr 7, 2021
Apr 7, 2021 at 9:17 AM UTC
the odorless aluminum man pit, in my face...
ah, m'body,
meet m'mind wandering, re
turning from gravity
de-if-icating
anal-is-this-ity to now. ifity, if you, we,
have, inhabit, time
to stretch, to live
slowly easy,
no umph,
ah, sigh,
the point of being embodied at all is what,
exactly? Exactly right.
we be
we know
we grow in knowing sequences
- points of light -
of imaginable numbers reasoning words
taken as granted re
ality,
- those are Space-ex's, ignor'em
- those are not natural, yet
we imagine we were,
then this
this very then
this's then that's
mine then yours, see. First me,
then this body in my service, finally finishing
its being, as I lie remembering I remembered
to brush my teeth,
rub aluminum silicates on my arm pit where
my nose is stuck,
ah. no pain. no smell. I think
I broke my neck,
but that was a wrong thought, tested only
for the time taken to think it,
testing times are never wasted, be not
deceived. Received truth can't become untrue.
Oct 9, 2022
Oct 9, 2022 at 4:11 PM UTC
Awake to a strange bugging nag
A tick of thought nestled between
The dripping seconds that sway my fate
And thus, the world-- for men we stay
I crawl to silent rocky planes
endeared to noting but silicates
with blood I christen their timeless face
With this flesh of mortal deviate
And soon my bones will give you pause,
my blood will pool,
my skin pale, taught and gauze
yet where you stay, alone from life,
my soul will rise
To endless light
To end this night
Apr 16, 2018
Apr 16, 2018 at 10:35 PM UTC