habeas corpus

Here, drink through sorrows until they pass you by
There, think through tomorrow and future reads like lies.

Mere words disembodied from voice, spelling
Torn from the codex of the alphabet. I see you
Blooming softly beneath an enflamed and desolate sky.
I hear you singing sweetly amid the concrete silence
That serves as music for wilted eyes.

Words disembodied from actions. “The nebulous
Mystique of mysticism serves as a mural over
totalitarian factories as the vampire’s beauty
deflects the eyes of your heart from his fangs.”

Actions untold by words. The swelling of the ground
In an earthquake of anger, the split shock in the earth
When Lorca fell and poet’s blood warbled in ribbons
From his thin pale mouth. Spanish fascists painted
Picasso’s Guernica with Nazi aircraft howling earth-bound
In the way paintbrushes don’t. Machine-guns rarely
Crackle grotesque pointillism through canvas, and
Explosions lack the ease of cubism’s two dimensions.

Here, think through sorrows until they read like lies
There, drink through tomorrow and the future passes you by.

Words as actions. “Fuck you.” A hot prickling on the inside and a gasp.

Actions as words with idiots slurping their newspaper bowls for sugar-flavored gruel and calling themselves informed and cultured. Well, they have opinions like you and me. On hairstyles, what is the best button to buy for fifteen cents, and a single poem about the dream figure who will one day make them king while they moan in self-pity about Nietz Che and his philosophy of Marvel comic book heroes. But they know that their money is safe as long as they deposit their tongues into the right investments.

Words as activity, flowing velvet. Peach rhymes with a similar mouth. Roving poet. East lines drawn through a telephone’s shout. Morphing sub-let into deep freeze storage of furniture meat. The birds called collect. Wonder-movement under a whorl of amusement. Laughing whirlwinds. Long-distance regrets.