As/Is







1.15.2004



Waiting for me in the arms of a guilty
city, you grow cold and vague
with snow. At a certain point
in dialogue with the sycophant
I require no more input, and no input
requires me. You'll be able to
swim now, head just above the un-
comfortable line that dragged your mother
past your dad, himself glazed and frosted,
buffed like a mirror but rippled to
distort. He avoids the city; nothing
grows there, or flies, or swims.

But your mother's just fine, with
her house a conversation piece at
last. When I talk now clauses buckle
over each other, pile up in subcutaneous
knots, and no-one can respond to that.
My gelded town sucks its own
reflection from the nightly news:
this "hardened steel town" is reeling.
A teacher drunk in a hotel room drunk
with a student. The lessons come
frozen