August 6th

Aug. 6th, carved in desks with old knives:

“Back when our common cause was alive
And--let’s say--the hyacinth fields were in bloom
Children watched as the soldiers marched by
All the birds fell like frogs from the sky
Prostrate in the streets every crescent moon
Lonesome offspring of which still resound
With the victimless sins of their authors passed down
And the remnants of loathsome, disjointed worlds
Along the short path round the lily pad pond
With off-white deerskin wedding dress on
German songs, homemade bonnets like old-order
Amish girls jilted by squirrels
In the parks of Sioux Falls
Haunted by church bells
Like ghosts of applause
And the earth deep down tire-stacked walls like
New Mexico, peaceful as moth-bitten pincushion dolls making up myths about wounds without cause...”

And sometimes when it’s quiet my heart feels like Guernica

[scenes from old air raid] on screens in blue dusk
Perfumed neighborhoods/graveyards the breath feels like
Flies in my lungs, voice like ambulance
Sirens whose light floods the ground
(“praying mantis spreads arms”
Said the lines of whose palm?)
Skyline shifting like clouds
Became “airplane descends”
[fade to scenes on the ground]
Human foreheads all smashed
Foreign cars upside down
Insect mouths open wide
I stared down a huge insect
Bright red-glowing eyes
[does it feel wrong to say a thought “metastasized”?]
Legs on both highway sides

S a i d i n s e c t w a s m e c h a n i z e d ! ! ! ! ! !

(Said insect was mechanized!)