All the Sights
Legs uncross and re-cross for an hour or so
on a deck chair between islands
breathing exercises don’t help
the noise of the engine, of children, of footsteps
alcohol sweats out as quickly as its drunk
the towel is itchy, the sunglasses—too heavy
cocktail straws are mangled, twisted, dropped
on plates with cello-topped toothpicks
the ocean is in the distance, its smell immediate
and caustic, filled with decay and exhaust
dinner will soon be served, something appropriate,
native and unoriginal: bananas will be set on fire
and served with vanilla ice cream.
- Brendan McEntee
(featured in the poetry forum 09.26.10)
Valued Destiny
This Friday morning you’ll stand, city-bound,
on the platform above the sewage smells of the street,
anticipating the sun cracking through the canopy
as Scott Joplin ragtime becomes an earworm
on your smartphone, interrupting your
re-examination of the pie-chart
showing the quantifiable
relationship of time and money:
the speculation of your capital.
Later, before you stumble into a cab
with blood on your pant-cuffs
happy to be heading home
for another weekend of weddings
and children’s birthday parties,
you’ll walk against a high
brick wall in the Garment District,
looking for a door numbered
twenty-three and listening for the sounds
of expensive guitars playing old blues
that you remember from public radio shows.
- Brendan McEntee
(added 09.26.10)
Dirt Light Water
the origin of man:
of dirt and water and odd things
left alone after naming
asking for equality with mosquitoes
put to sleep for the inverted birthing
of wife number three. put into the world
for fear of potential immortality
--what comes after knowledge—
a cycle of debt and obligation
refracting in a mirrored circuit.
the origin of man
is born with a blood clot kicked by rabbit
dropped from buffalo carved from stone
born of corn from she-named earth
by the all-knowing indifferent sun
the origin of man
is carved pieces of driftwood
from the sons of giants
licked free from rime or
chaos birthing gaea
who created everything or
taken from the blood
of a sea-god for sufferage or
words uttered to a river
creating an embryonic sun
pushing life through dirt.
the origin of man:
hatched from an egg
framed by an egg
pervasive and eternal
reflecting skin.
- Brendan McEntee
(featured in the poetry forum 05.19.10)
Can and Shall
Four on the floor and nothing left
but sweat and cadence, broken
medicine bottles and images
of a water stained Socialist Realism
painting, overdubbed with industrial
gray. Dread is the name of the song.
Dancing in the last abandoned factory
set to be blown for the latest revision,
boxes of video clips of kittens and imagined
innovations; miniatures of a lifetime
summed up on bumper-sticker grievance.
We head toward understanding—
we head toward silence.
Pastel blue for you, cadmium
for me, coloring an abstract
doctrine of desire.
- Brendan McEntee
(added 05.19.10)
The Next Necropolis
The crowds will come, some in ceremony
Waltzing through the sleet, weary of legacy
they register their ambivalence.
Candles wearily sputter in rainfall;
cadence of light misfires.
Once the wounds are open
they can only be stitched up to heal:
the scar becomes memory’s tabernacle.
Tonight you come into your own.
- Brendan McEntee
(added 05.19.10)
Three Arrows
Feather floating over a beautiful war
as the Blue of the West Coast Ocean
meets the East Side Breakers
breathing over the time scored borders.
We’re beginning to deserve this;
flailing as the membrane
between action and conscience shreds.
Glasgow flats and Brooklyn brownstones
Apartments everywhere let us share
a vague universality,
minimizes our inimitable natures:
Homo reductus.
young turks sit at keyboards,
release their viruses into systems
shouting Whoville songs
quashed chaotic smear into empirical thought.
A teardrop breaks on pavement
and we’re left at the end of hurt
in a car where neither of us can speak
only accuse-- trifling, paper lives shredded,
Until, fighting for survival, we disarm
before we regress too far.
Burnt and drowned from within
Potential buried behind the bush
‘til the morass entombs us,
exhausted, into brittle romance.
Chewing bitter root,
waiting for our enemies to emerge
whispering new realities--
where we weren’t a week before
--proving again our adaptability
Trenchcoats over wet London
passive faces in corner lamps:
tropes we understand.
The turnabout in the desert and jungle
and small Midwestern cities in repetitious
MIDI beats by bedroom geniuses
no improvements only consensus
For competing overmind agendas:
has creativity has become shorthand for expression,
craftwork has become artwork,
and artwork is anything you throw on a wall?
"The best all lack conviction...."
Clothing must be couture and food must be gourmet
and we must be self-consciously isolated,
endlessly choking on the dust of personal
anthropology. Road-trippers, we pull over
celebrating the raw glory of nature
on a civilized macadam strip:
father and mother to both.
- Brendan McEntee
(featured in the poetry forum 12.31.09)
Time Well Spent
The week well-spent at the Weeping Wall
earning bloody hands and cheeks
while the Machiavelli handed out fresh
ointments and warm novelettes
about Anne Frank’s in-between days.
They believe in you.
You brought a mandolin
while I swore at the mini-Moog
built into bistro wall—classically illustrated—
in the depths of a Turkish neighborhood.
We drank narcotic coffees with whirling spoons.
They believe in you.
There were plodding children and
dispassionate academics who existed
in long conspiratorial talks about homesickness,
deconstruction and geological imperatives,
mixing freedom with rough trade.
They believe in you.
My teeth fell out against the curb
that last day, when your hair turned dark,
when the ghosts of hopeless history
ground your heart to Imagist anecdotal
unvarnished dogwood pulp.
They believe in you.
- Brendan McEntee
(featured in the poetry forum 11.10.09) |
