87th Nail   

Down without unloved and loveless property
Down without ownership and obligation
Down without the terrible strangulation of the ellipse
And our discernable orbit
Down without magnanimity and vanity
Down without poetry light
Sweat and suffering
The greatest of great cities

History and possibility—

And all the citizens that love her
Whisper her invisible philosophy
And tuck her promise in with the children
Tear her walls of language and skin down
And pray for her healing
Wear her passion as a passion
And call her by ninety-nine holy names—

Rhythm of opposite and intersection
Parallel tragedy and abandon
And at times nothing at all
At times
The mad surgeon of my dreams
The serpent in Canada that hymns me with love
These ridiculous possessions
The scholars of war
The anti-second attention span
The rich playing poor
And the poor playing dumb
All the kids and guns

She thinks—
Blue the car that picked me up
Blue the condom wrapper
Blue the sky this morning
Blue the afternoon narcotic
Blue buckle on another belt
Blue five dollars and vacation for the veins &
Stubbed late night feet stained
Carpet motel memory
Dirty knees and filthy knickers
For the nothing hidden in a wallet.

Streetlight fog alley graffiti
Poor souls crying for freedom
From the Atman and the money

Money—can you spare a dollar
Money—I own the moon
Money—if there’s not enough, there is no time for you

You pickpocket accountants
Cave men on the oil rigs
Devastation in some forest I should give a shit about
In my free time—
Patriotism
Flashing lights and the blood flag hysteria
Some kid and his terrorist skull
Once he got the idea
There was nothing else we could do to him
So we keep it as a warning
We keep it as a warning
We keep it as a warning
Keep those bright souls safe and free from learning
Om.

Free from the rhetoric and dreams of devices
That were never really there
With the serpents and bulls
Supernova of youth and indiscretion
Tattooing scars roads
Night and railway
Not speaking for weeks on end
The sigh of lonely shipping lanes
Flagless expatriated wanton abandoned
The soul
Sunned but still shouting
Everything art and
Everything sick and
Everything human and
Everything possible

Fire breathing dragons
Through paper people and paper streets—

Let every recyclable generation know
That all their metaphors are dying slowly too.

Whimsically flirt with the tramps of disaster
Coffin nail poetry & the mad bloody dynamo of imagination

Fast farewell to the ministry of flesh and construct
To scrawl on padded walls a sane constitution—

In the dynamic thread ticking
Vibration of life and One
Om

That there should exist home for every single homeless
Om

For the stealing
And the stolen
And those that can’t care less
The cruelty of children
Insanities of lovers
Gods and other various paraphilia
Just different colours
Om

Milton’s jazz elbow
Be bop Kabala
87th nail in my casket tonight—

No prayer for escape
No prayer for escape
From the exile
To any other
Empty other
Space.

© 2006 Jefferson Lavender