in the range of the mountain king

my voice extends about as far as any arm could reach
and thence it is my fact-based fate to fine dowries
in the making and reach trousseaus over my head into the luggage compartment
for the great train ride

I sit in my ten-gallon hat with my six-shooters at my waist
watching my fellow passengers to see if anything's nothing
of what it seems

the landscape whizzes by

I'm on the roof of my car

there's a terminal up ahead

we furiously fight slugging and rolling till he's hanging over the side

there's a bridge up ahead

I see him dangling over the precipice

his fall echoing among the peaks

______________________________________________________  


eulogy

Kazan

it is some unnecessary fact
undoes us some
times and therefore do I
by fact sometimes decree
an ivy and laurel be
strewn in despite of any
facts as in a book found
deader than any doornail  

you put any foot forward
as you will across any
doorsill and there you
are in the fact of the
inside or the outside
or in or out to some
greater or lesser degree  

that is some outside
or inside yields to other
wheres more inside or
more outside than before
the center to be reached
or the ne plus ultra    


______________________________________________________  

deathless rump

I came
seem to
before

that was my day
along the river

the house stacks up
before or day
or night
stood

stands still here
abouts wherefore
never

or I still
in the house
exposed


© Christopher Mulrooney

Bio:   poems and translations in The Pacific Review, Tiger, Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore, Poetry Salzburg Review, Frank, Perihelion, Folio, Euphony, RiverSedge, Sojourn, etc.   Author of notebook and sheaves.