The Short Imposition of Living

by Matthew Keuter

How to Vacation in a Country at War

1
One way I know is to become the coffee pot
below the office calendar,

this is better than becoming the filing cabinet

the coffee is stirred by everyone alike
with their tongue.

You might also consider becoming the calendar

but in bright-field illuminations of vitamin C crystallites
you can’t feel the wind

naked as a horse, fill its chest over the wave

& bellow the deep black electric night at sea.
Be the wind then

or become the wave inspired by your former self

the wind(with the moon that is inside you &)
inside the wave

even the wave that is sleeping inside the eye of the shark

closed within the wave asleep inside the eye
of the storm

& the desire inside the shark inside the wave

is the prehistoric desire within us to master the seas
with our desire(& if not desire cowardice

desire)to escape the terrified city

of our employment(too early the hospice
of our desire).

*

We Numerous we giddy
before the bridge crossing into wilderness

above the river drawing all its long face

to pucker & kiss the mouth of the sea.
We numerous as shark’s teeth

as fragile, as easily replaces, as irreplaceable, as

much killer
as much priest

as likely to die in our sleep

as much owing to a mouthful of water
as much the face beneath the surface of veil, as much the heart veiled

in its dark guise of infidelity, as much the mourning heart in its veil of levity

as much the right cowboy as the right dude whipping the sick horse
drawing its carriage

through the sponge of exhaust wiping down
Park West

the one that looked you dead in the face

with the fly drowning in its eye
& whispered

shoot the fly.

*

&
&

if the fly like the moon can escape the eye

can the wave cheat the moon? can love reverse the tide
of familiarity? can a bullet be fashioned of opposite intent

to enter the eye that blinks in the rifle’s scope?

can the tongue return to the mouth
of the silent grave to command its maker

to sit like children before the fire

in a country at war?

Bird Poems in a Country at War

1
A courier pigeon walks into a bar and says to the Emperor’s falcon
All possible universes exist except one
where I love you.

2
Bird watching can be inspirational
when you are unable to fly
to heights

dead children look like sparrows,

for example.

The distance it is safe to follow a woman
is also something men don’t understand

3
-to Rob Cook

13 trumpet trees do not a bandstand of angels make
but 13 blackbirds choiring there
herald an extinction of winter out of the singing air

4

Sometimes crossing a bridge at night
swaddled in low sodium gauze of the alkaline lights
I imagine a migration North inside a moist mouth
on the wingtip of a flock of migrating mouths.

& if you are anything like me
crossing a bridge in the rain at night racked with sobbing
then let us too fall in love now & here

across the distance

across the threshold of the mystery, the mountain we know is there
with its summit & long descent into the valleynot for all it’s true

others may empty into the sea

while I agree to go blindly
into an old country

as mercenary as a pigeon