By Livio Farallo
some cracking, everywhere
I. the ether unsolved,
heavy, sits at my feet
near licking paws
as the car door slams
on the side of my head
and someone polishes
their woodgrain furniture
with spray from a rusted can
in a sardonic smile in a careless way.
and my sad worries,
my towel blues soak easily
through the floor and litter
the basement with dank
musty love: bats to fill a cave,
screeches to fill a night,
faded armies of moonbeams
in valleys, the sun tying
mountains together
with shoelaces
and throttling the tongue
against my sweaty foot.
II. those
twitching ones,
the mad,
waiting
so often
for themselves,
so unhappily
watching time
in herds,
in a tome
of golden waving grass
in a prairie
of uncertain
dogs dying,
flitting about
with
so
much
motion
they never move at all.
and the flies
buzzing around
their heads
are nothing less
than halos
of an untrapped sun
they wave away.
III. a one-lane bridge
like a city train
spreading disease
to the country;
each berth
a squirming repository
of some microscopic flame
chomping
for a chance to wildfire our cells:
this is what works.
if we could only be
fantastic and calm
at the same moment
lives could be saved
on an incredible scale:
lives could be uninjured
and unbroken
as sky. until dropping
in our tracks
in old age,
is the last that
anyone hears from us.
particles
in the naked silence
of fractioned years
before fruitopia and bratislava,
the fissioning
uninterrupted chains of energy flow,
the controlled heat.
the uranium of a much younger earth
sucked up from algal waters
by lead-suited bacteria, ungeigered,
and boiling away at critical
critical mass.
and now we try to duplicate
the magic with computers
and humans too sure of themselves.
and now we try to smash
theoretical ideas with devices
the size of texas, for a blip
of measureability; and then, noting it,
whoop like stockboys
when the manager leaves town.
we are,
of course,
occupiers of space;
little more.
and
we know
the weight
of such witless things:
the sure subatomic bubblings of jacuzzis;
the peripheral resistance of bald tires:
and little more.
window out window in
so –
never, is a blur
of sun-grayed dust
i want to skip across,
as a stream is forded by rocks
and then stones and then pebbles
and then gurgling again;
all the words
you have spoken
that i don’t recall –
a yawn is what
i want to be done with
but the jaw locks.
a fistful of dollars*
on the last crack
of cement,
where they put
readability
on the edge
of a crayon,
color is a mysterious war
while its absence cannot be explained.
the irritation of breath
is what keeps them alive,
what makes the snake shun legs
and yell at its shadow.
so it is too early and bright
for death to be anymore
than anesthesia;
for sweet fog to be more
than a temperate mist.
if they arrive early,
show them the palm prints
on my bedroom wall,
the breaths on my ceiling.
tell them: once,
out of a pretty girl
walked a woman too drunk
to even be hopeful.
they ought to ditch their lubricating jellies,
their tight black hose
and fill their starry rooms with nightfall and
soft hay.
with smells decidedly different.
*with apologies to clint eastwood
endeavor
if i hear again
how the hot water of the world
is the territory of the sun,
how the stoneground glass –
an end-of-century thing –
is sprinkled over the sinking boat,
how spittle and drool
are honest secretions
and the d.c. overflows with them
how the river on which i live
never passe me twice (though
i smell the water drifting
through open windows every
morning);
if i hear again
how human lives
can be reduced from whole
to molecules and pipettes of invisibility,
i think i’ll jump up
out of my dna
and scream.
Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York. His work has appeared or, is forthcoming, in The Cardiff Review, The Cordite Review, The Blotter, Ranger, Misfit, Poetry Salzburg Review, and elsewhere.