poetry by association

the unfamiliar clothes placed in the art gallery
to remind us of fashions statement crossing out
the ancient reverence for acts of nudity upon
the funereal ceremonies beneath the high point
of sunlight...

the dinner left in the slaughterhouse for the murdered
to eat before their execution brought untold retribution
upon the holders of the long knives,
ghost rebellion in the moonlight...

the engine placed within the horse's chest
to propel its legs in mechanical gesticulations
of material permission, the monstrosity of
mechanics blended with organics...

the empire lost with the past's pendulant motions
across the politics of removal and amnesia
that destroyed the starfish encased in lucite
with buzz bombs, landmines, toothsome bullets
and napalm that turned evening into daylight...

what have they given you,
but ritual and a sliver of starlight
some cigarettes, a cough in your chest
and a diminishment of firmament inside
your pulsating breast that turns your
flight into a heavyweight fight upon
the stones of antiquity encased in the
smiles of entertained god's who don't
meet out punishment, only happiness...

there is the possibility of finding the void
between people and calling it responsibility
to the loving voice that calls us on the wind
after the roughest weather,
and all the rains are overflowing the souls
lit by lantern in the glen of nature's gallery
where they let the horses ramble on snorting
like children glowing in the eve of birthdays,
where the empires build roads and public services
for the public servants and slaves taken care of
by kind masters who wash them with sunlight,
where the banquet unfurled across velvet robes
of tablecloth where jugglers walked on tabletops
and cracked jokes about spilled cups overflowing

where the clothing represented our art upon
our bodies like architecture covering only
our bare supports and reinforcements that
keep our ribcages from groaning at all the
ancient strife pulled out from beneath our
organs and shown as our sufferings in testament
to the value of false judgements...

basic leaf upon the pond,
in water both cold and soft
pushing wrinkles across the skein
of tension that made floating
fully formed with love and
sinking down into the mud
just a pasttime that happens
when the sky is storming...