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

It Belongs To Someone
In the middle or late early middle of my life I went to the woods like
Gucci tote full of horse tranq’s, cougar cub on a leash
Who’s world is this?
It belongs to someone by the name of decadent severity.
They put teeth where your mind is
& diamonds in them
not only a cemetery in the rain on Christmas morning
but a cemetery in the sunshine on Christmas morning on an island in the Caribbean Sea.
The numbness is moving from foot to foot.
The circuits are hot but not this time enough to conduct what is managing energy
manger before you’d articulate
one perfect rosary happens to late autumn boughs
so suddenly looking repentant the leaves, god,  are scorching
& never play favorites.
The numbness is incorporates green city limits
is not adolescently numb
the kind of thing used to brew tea in & journal
electrified shade glowered branches its late & I smoke until my heart’s content.
Would you play my favorite an is eventide they too are we company town
the heart’s content is smoke
but the numbness burns out all around it.
I can walk proud or even less fairly if it seems upon me
situated as two kinds of weight ( a velour ) that corrupts any effort to touch
to the socket the lips or the lotion to each bramble valve.
No Datean numbness is still
he’s to agitate purity deep in his sepia well which a spring water chest
or a letter of flame or somebody or other.
Hermes, the far side of non-sedentary old gods has a leaf blower arm.
We should keep him from this sacred tree?
Or set his ass free onto that so menagerie perfect I hear ‘Heart of Glass’
where the numbness has been the beneficiary of gentrification
its real estate holdings have gone through the roof though the windows they throb
like they’re managing blood just too look through.
The numbness is going over against the right hand and on into the left one
it is moving its Leah side into its Rachel side this feels a little like veins as they flower with heat
a free limpid helix of Narnia’s end at a clear paradisiacal door.
This poem appears in the 2007 Anthology
View all poems by Dana Ward