Poems by year: 2007  2006  2005  2004  2003  2002  2001  2000 
By series: Bridge St  In Yr Ear  Ruthless Grip

We are Dumb as Bells

No chipping grout. No elementary
guess to build a foundation. No
mahogany gesture. Negate everything
but the amplified rhythm of feet
on an electric stage. Slow moves
twist inside quick ones, torquing
their way to the audible.

Dumping estimates outside the border.
The tenant cries about rich increase.
Corn grows into the soil searching
for aquifers. We are dumb as bells.
To explain would be to enter a
winding path carrying only bread
crumbs, and the birds singing.

Bare feet tapping a rhythm into
a hidden microphone. We would be
thickly stuck in our smallest
world of senses if not for
the incursions that send us
where blood drips in the spirit
and words gently careen in open space.

After entering the second, deeper
woods he obsessively asked if
we were lost. This even though a
highway droned just feet to our
west. We could walk there and
follow it out any time.

To bring to focus an exact wave.
To define a dissipation.
To unearth what forgot to die.
An echo of an echo argues against
a balance in the inner ear.
Technicians dismantle the stage.

I am tired of hanging where
I cannot mutate across county
lines into the greatest local
dancer. Clacking my way forwards
against the stingy grip of provisions,
the alternatives for every border
must be hidden where we forget to look.