December 10, 2012

poem 451 of a poem a day for 2012

art by Joseph Shaeffer ©




arriving at Bradbury complex, river junction depot in the north ward of the former America

it is one
of the few places
still holding
fresh water
near infinity

I wait to disembark
the canal ways
are scalpel wide
molecular begins
they are lowering
transportation costs
to guillotine swift
they slow pole
clean severance pay
attaching 3 x 5 index cards
as placarded disgraces
the latest head displaced
with rolling eyes
attaching a criminality 
to this 8 lb. head
on display

documents please
the border agent says
and I reach
for the gun pocket
inside my coat
to pull out
my passport

it is as if I were on
some tele-scripted
evangelical cathode
ray nipple stage
innuendo and subtlety
shaved thin enough
to see through
passports are
bio metric scatter rays
palm out densities 
married to flesh 
so this indentification process
just picks up
the vagaries
of sight variations
but we humans
still need badges
designations and
scarlet letters
on the ready
when we look
each other
in the eye
to say something
does not smell right

this is why
the police divisions
created to analyze
vector pathogens
are stocked heaviest
at the borders and
all the gated privileges
inside them
they test the air and
every of one us
a germ carrying bag of pus
this is what citizenry became
when we stripped ourselves
to core out our humanity
we had once tied ourselves
to identity based on a cultural,
geographic and environmental
causative invisibility
but we are now
just glass specimens
jars, really
meant for
emergencies
to break open

glass tidal domes
became the normal
ceiling structure
of the clouds
at the turn
of the 21st century

building anger, over having
lesser amounts
of the things
we have grown
to know as intrinsic
was eating us
from the inside out
things went missing
for days and weeks and
electricity waned and
waxed like crumble snakes
holding heat in a July 
short night swelter
we shelter tracked 
and mined static
radio signals for rain

we sometimes, told stories
of when we used to
open the domes
when we thought
the air might be clean
for a few hours
when we could invoke
any memory born without vigilance against
influenza or some other virus unleashed
when the resources ran out
and we fought to attain them
more than our paper credit soul
or the leaden debt of our bodies
left behind in neatly stacked racks
of canned goods

we used to see stars
now we see the great
helium tethered networks
of balloons tying
dance-weaves of wind
gathering data inside
a constancy of clouds
these hover brains
troposphere hunt
for information and
organisms that may help
what hinders us riding out
all the wars 
of information, dragging
front line suffocation
we wear each diversion
to entertain
screen-shell reverses
in a non-stop battle
of infinite candy versus
fasting before asking
please, may we have more
time to remember
a way back
to when plastic
did not matter
and was not part
of everything we ate
when they burned books
and sages 
to fuel hunger
and we foraged 
where we could look
for lies to keep
us warm and fed

EJR ©

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