Blues for Tomorrow
Gatefold
haven’t you always
always stood standing
nobody else will know these,
some vague memory of autonomy
hovering in the daze
so that suddenly
NOW is called transition
orange and blue
[something scribbled out]
reverberation
future blues/
nothing will be okay
nothing remains pristine for long
stretched out in dark bed,
the spectacular lights of death
all this terror,
the flying humanoids in the air for real,
the sinister people who want
to come back from the past,
a leafless time
that wind shook
standing at the window ledge
looking out at the fields
or on whatever street,
no one feels
these
ruins
inside,
in the eyes the flesh and hair
and the hair juts below the belly,
line
and even below, the dark of the nest
Grab the Polaroid
Grab the polaroid
and head down to where they spray graffiti
on brick walls
and piss in alleys
the canal flows nearby
clogged with dead leaves of limitless autumns,
sometimes with suicides—
I mean that wasn’t no dream
when you saw the police at the iron railing
looking down
or instead the river’s mouth
at high tide a vast black pool,
cormorants wrestle with writhing eels,
light glints
on rubbery scales
iron-blue beak
swallows alive—
don’t drop off the edge of the
earth
Copyright © Michael S. Begnal 2012