If time moved the other way

I'd still think the essential problem of modern life is the articulate trans-
formation of chaos into form. Red bird to emblem. Coal
to fire (captivated on a thread) to incandescent lamp.

The Central Valley Project took my bottled message all the way
up like something wrong, bouncing on gallons
and gallons appropriated, for all reasons.

When I consider surrealism on the veneer line and Tom Dalin's kidneys
we only seemed to survive, in fact we're glued and pressed.

Tom and I became installed in a new work of expressionist
architecture at the short end of the highway. He dreams that he died
when the fog halted one morning, and I gaze at the sky

nailgunned and weatherproofed.

From here we can only move backward into those bandsaws,
watch ourselves cut from raw material, split into fat cants
jolted forward at the pony headrig, run through.

It doesn't pay to feel sentimental when they squeeze you
into so much decking pressurized and steamed on the rotating
shift system: you forget who you are.

You ironically run the binding machine with a free hand
on the day you are shipped. It feels like an open road but the company
has you tagged and inventoried. You end up on a wall,

which feels unique but isn't. The essential trouble
is the capture of every living thing, all the
measurements.



The City Is Covered With Flies

maybe it's me
something personal

this is deep shit
when I smoke on the stoop
B.L. Kennedy wanders by

with a bottle of heart attack
and a pack of strokes

going to make a documentary
for the library
put all the poets in

will I read at the benefit
money going to his archive
well that's a concrete poem

I thought I was looking at a turtledove
on a hardwire
but it was a drop of oil
shining in a bucket full of tears.



she tried on my pants

I tried her
without them

lost in seaweed
between rocks

I cut my tongue
on the oyster.


© Crawdad Nelson