These gates are always swinging

(it's not easy for everyone)

        

 

These gates are always swinging:

they screech,

squeal at each other.

These gates are jaws;

without partners,

they are harmless.

 

Now a field of pistons;

here work is the law.

Day and night they strain;

groaning up, collapsing down.

These pistons are muscles 

betrayed by all.

 

And this, the room of wings;

hold tighter.

These wings flap, frighten the air;

have pity on the wings,

they have no direction,

only agitation.

 

And in the end,

 

space:

here molecules disband.

Unmoored, we fall;

terrorized by incomprehension

 

we scream into eternity.

Growth

A dot: curious, stirring. 

A fleck: moving, creating. 

A fly: forming, inflating.          

A rock: swelling, building.          

A truck: bulging, looming, 

             

             bullying,

            

                            roaring

                                          You.

 

Contemplating Goya

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plate 36

 

(referring to plate 36 from THE DISASTERS OF WAR

 by Francisco Goya) 

Contemplating this corpse,

you lean back on your elbow. 

A heart not pumping,

blood not coursing. 

Is that not a corpse?

Is it not dead as a snail's shell? 

Your eyes fixed on his face;

composure. 

There, that's where you recline;

beneath his composure  

trumping the handiwork

of the hangmen who thought, 

(as they always do),

that death was the final transaction.