BEAUTY AND THE UNREQUITED LANDSCAPE

THE STILL LIFE OF THE PIGEON

Each pigeon is the soul
of a homeless penny.

Its hunger is constant.

At the beginning of creation
the pigeon fell from a tree
three miles deep in the sky

into a lair of oatmeal,

and spent a thousand years
getting up.

When the pigeon first crawled
from the open stomach of a penny,
it murmured the noise for hunger.

The pigeon sleeps in a draculaic row of gurgling bowels
on the iron shelves above the el train.

It wears an ash-colored suit
to celebrate the momentum of the gnat.

Each pigeon in the bus-stop slag of Western and Lawrence
carries a tumor of dry sweat in its glands
and eats through concrete to spread the flock.

The rat-winged pigeon balances
above a trench of half-devoured cellophane
and listens to the hiss of wet cigarettes
in its dreams;

and its dreams are like barges on a blanket
of churning pavement, like a sea
it can't fly,
like a wave of asphalt the pigeon and its
dolorous wings can't resist,

because there is meat and bread
floating on each petrified surge.

The pigeon has a glass intestine,
a warm hole,
and with its beak siphons the salt from the shell
of everything the newspaper thinks,

places it in that hole,
and moves on.

Hardly a voice muses:
“Pigeon, smoke-filled dove...”

But the hole continues to fill,
and the pigeon continues to fill
with anything the sun casts away.

Sometimes the pigeon makes it
to the top of the clock, and burns there
like a remote and godless eagle,

and then its eyes turn black and violent
as the middle of an ocean it’s never seen.

Here it comes now.

Fork-footed.
Hallucinating like an old washcloth.
Ether-roach with a flock
of eggs.
Leaking like an ambulance.

The pigeon grows a beard
of nervous sweat.

The pigeon growls at your feet
like a small bulbous dumpster.

Nothing fears it.

Pigeon, grumpy bag,
sack of whim-blown fur,
where is your nest?

Are you trying to transmit something
from earth to moon,
something hideously bland,
without glory,
a thread of dysentery,
a moment of hair life?

So what, you ate the mist
off a shower curtain.

You ate the color of a sheet
at dawn.

You ate the sound a rat’s tail makes,
you ate an effigy of soap.

And you dropped

              an aspirin-colored feather

on the sidewalk in your wake.

MACHINE SPECIES

Machine is between us

   menial
   trembling
   vowel-husk

where is Machine?

in our underwear
   up our sleeves
behind our ears

Machine
softly
purring

Mr. and Mrs. Machine
holding hands in our mouths

Grandma and Grandpa Machine
dragging their blankets
through the rain

Machine bunk
Machine piss
Machine pill
Private
Captain
and General Machine

ornery palm machine,
can I make you an enemy?

no, said Machine

lovely lilting hairspray machine,
can I call you lover?

yes, said Machine

when the eye looks shyly
at the body of Machine
does it glisten?

when Machine
chews quietly on our pillow
do we feel Machine?

make no Mistake,
we are with Machine

instant
carnal
friendly
mobile
happy Machine

I planted a flower
and it bloomed Machine

I chewed a piece of bacon
and it shivered Machine

I vomited the sky
and it sobbed Machine

when Machine
listens to our breathing
we forgive Machine

when Machine
crawls around on the table
we bless Machine

when Machine makes more Machines
we become Machine

spider-cast
hyper-gear
vast and arid egg
   drip
deserts
   blanks
buttons
taps
the long
long
weather
of Machine

the season
of groaning mood Machines

the mood of Machines
growing

what can we give Machine
but our lives?

how can we please Machine
but with a field?

where is Machine's iris
of fiery limbs?

where its space of snaggled
bark?

its core of roasted leaves?

from what root climbs
Machine?

if the tabernacle of Machine
were wounded violently
we would tumble into a puddle
of dimes

we would ignite like sticks
in the shadow
of the evolution of Machine