THE MAGICIAN'S TOOLS

{ in memory of Franz Wright }


By what criteria may one identify
a worthy doctor? For that matter

How does one go about determining
the veracity of their child's school teacher?

Trick questions covered by 
insurance policies. Every institution 
holds its fair share of nuts squarely in place

From the warden's staff down to the student inmates
The trick is learning how to spell correctly
the trick to thinking, that is 

We may think of it as magic
where the letters of the words
in a literal sense conjure reality 

I think of it as writing 

SIX OTHER SHADES

of darkening black gathering intensity
as it forms the cloud polluting the eye
that scans over the horizon to see what
comes next seven blades of circumstance
arranged in a flowering scale dripping
diamond mercury drops in a stitchwork
buffeting a gale driven between gulfs
sparked in the albumen of outer space
while eight shadows stagger across this
permutation still taking place and all
nine entwined molecular chains separate
into three trinities combined while we
emerge from the tenth portal to find
one packed homestead open to infinity
dividing in twain to face each other
off in a battle of tempestuous love
giving birth to the third elemental
which time will double into six other
shades of blackened darkness gathering

STILL LIFE

Standing in the bathroom by a porcelain brink
looking crosswise in the mirror over the sink
noticing how far back this reflection goes
hardly anybody left worth a damn even knows
and the rest dropped off what's beginning to look
like a long time ago now and by that I mean already
marked in the pages of this printed out book.

So we bought an old house and entered the game
of war against the mouse of our division and name
buried in a long story that tore through our lives
to say the least at a minimal pace and it thrives
to this day without having to come out and state it
point blank the rift from smooth talking beast
to furry four-pawed friend continues without end
possessing each and every one of us who made it.

To trigger each other's passages as if we're one and all
encoded to be held in thrall swaying to the music
of the alternating staves getting edited genetically
along the superconductive way so that frenetically
everyone of us tailor made to react accordingly
until the long slow choral dance unwittingly reflects
an endless regression of our mirrored family tree.

The centipede walks and twists and talks to itself
and begins to understand this procession while it's
still unfolding off the shelf spitting and winking
to slice and cut like a barbed wire razor positively
humming with electromagnetic power cultivated
by a molecular chain still on the verge of balancing
itself out as we go on the whole wide world tested
in a panic before a mirror in self portrait arrested.

SNAP SHOT

{ for Gregory Alden Davis }


We divide our aspect in a lot of ways
Some of them haven't even been thought up
by the population infesting the world today
but used to be common knowledge millennia ago
others are diffused through the ages by only a fraction
as the fewer among us here so very well know
our mechanical nature swung into action
by the well driven engines manufacturing snow
with all the seasons unwound in a blur behind us
fueled by the dying chorus of a thousand suns
what other reason could there be to explain
this manifestation's for us because we are the ones
who imagine we can see ourselves from afar with alien eyes
without realizing vision itself must set us apart from the rest
defining each other as cells from the host of the skies
shedding a spiral trajectory of sputtering stars
there's only one shadow a singular reflection and we're not it
we are all that's left over after the fuse has burnt out
the impressionist flare fading away into darkness
to bring a concussion of echoes that are no longer a dream
but realized here in the flesh now and for all eternity


                                                           


                                                               


                                                             
                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                    
                                                                 

FISHNET BLANKET

A juxtaposition about
 our one  lonely   sun 

keeps us entranced
in a  dance  around 
each other  chasing

the evenings of our dawns
those dark capes detached
which  carry   away 
our  earliest   dreams

to  dissolve   amid 
the  sparkling   pinpoints 
of  Venus  and  the stars

HISTORY AS VIEWED BY THE PANOPTICON

The complete eating of burned skin. Ashen toast.
Can it not warm my pie. I have lost my older
sufferings. Absolve me of my gratitude. Untie
the swift knots of my prayer, but don't merely re-
peat platitudes: for mimicry I do not care. Environ-
mental disruptor persuades a hungry populace that
there is no such thing as the environment, and they
believe it. Just as they believe that there can exist
more than one disruptor. These spun patients slowly
develop a bubble spell reality. Their spin doctors
quickly form encrusted mica shells. All who they've
preyed upon then believe themselves to be a part of
their innermost circle. This describes how they are
each lost to the vortex of their own subconscious
imaginings. While one floats away as iridescent
soap bubbles flocking sunward, the others
gradually incarcerate themselves under-
neath the prestigious carapaces which
never fail to drown them into the dirt.
Dirt is very high on the list
of examination priorities.

FLUENT COMMAND

by Shaun Lawton  


Cursive's rules

its loops and curlicues

reveal a lot about us.
Perhaps its best we lay 

it to rest, buried along 

with the worst
of our secrets 

and plotting and lies 

a nice clean typography

will better keep us in line. 

It's fine, don't worry 

the quatrains
will be running on time

everything kept under strict control
while the sinuous, inveterate signature 

of our blossoming
gets rectified by 

autocorrection 

with machine-like 

precision.
Farewell to 

our sensuous rhythm. 

Welcome the fascist rule