Centrifugal » » » Brick Wall: the Mechanics of Loneliness

Loneliness.
There is nothing I can’t stand
more of. Its taste can come from your mouth
into another mouth, or from that mouth into
your mouth. Even when you’re not alone

it can cover the immeasurable distance
between lovers when they are lying in bed
together, not touching, not talking, or
touching and not talking, because to not touch

when lying in bed together is so
impossible, the mechanics of it
would require a long conversation
they are not ready to have, or have

had, but only recently, and only one
of them has a handle on its meaning and
is hiding it, gripped behind their back

like a hammer.

- Matthew Keuter

Conversations when we parallel down together

A fisherman told me this story about an electric storm
Striking a bed of kelp so many times
It was blanched white and the sea boiled around it
Stewing snails, muscles, and urchins in seaweed

Before striking the tail of an otter opening clams
On its chest. That two dolphins stood out of the water
In the eye of the storm, amazed, to watch the otter
Shoot fireballs out its ass and bark like a donkey.

I thought, isn’t that just the way
We fall in love:

Feasting on our backs in beds as wet as snails, on fire
Inside of a burning wave, kicked apart like a coal fire
Hee-hawing like a jackass before surrendering
Like a saint to the moment of grace in a fire. Or like the fisherman

Who told me he was born again in the yawning temple eye
Of a storm. Where he was lost for three days at sea
With the small black birds, the larger white ones
The expert riders: grey pelican, brown stork

Blue albatross and the two dolphins that must have
Told him about the otter. And you and I, Johanna
Who remember and forget differently our different dreams.

- Matthew Keuter

First World

I say, strike the cars off Manhattan & let the dogs run
over the island. We deserve the underground
if we can’t see the mistake in leaving
the sea, coming down from the trees, moving out
of your small apartment with the Bulgarian poet—
we deserve to be greeted by wolves. To have
our knees gnawed to points, our elbows sharpened
our accordions kinked, dogs to remind us
of the pure needs of hunger.

- Matthew Keuter