AMNESIA ’97 PART 2
or a chasm in each box, a ladder, or if A can read B takes orders, please stop
tear this picturesque ruin down, resurrect it in urine, the circle needed
to nest in the chain loop not opening the chest to swipe for solar life
but inches the whole apparatus forward
hauling stones with brother
dull keys of the weather
arc of the ocean of shine a house for civilizations’
simulation of glare against glass in the oil my hands face
the keystroke’s shape the car door open
as rain is the other road I forgot
●
like the planet a giant eyeball looking into the lines of space
a dream sticking a square knife in a square head
like forest erosion ten o’clock sunlight
started raining the entity looked the same silver
ennobling lived in honey fog
to the yet unlit air park
raining rivery chatter
is it, or not?
●
focus focus, an amphibian sits here between things
my heads my hands the great many things
I had line up in a lot with a sycamore fringe
dumb copy dumb dream
materialized and attached to a pole
was a habitual tactic spun on its axis
was a what she is telling the entity in the gallery wilderness
which is the VHS movie club
counting out the register
drive ice roads back to the ‘burbs
●
but loneliness: tedious gods of the deserts you shit
behind a gun aimed at the sea
a nation of stalks slowly accumulating sparkling masses
lemons’ and lentils’ scent he tells me
he cut in half the windows the skies in St. Louis
●
of the entity’s cirrhosis of assembled snow of not even work disappears
of sight while you sit at a table write or read
of a causeway extinguished to pay off what it cost
of tomb clock calling for the other from trash light a chord
of let loose without food, rent paid no roof going
of those in the morning and the saints heavy paints consecrate
of a bill converted to faces
●
into the cataract of secret years
after I dug fingerlings this ceaseless soothing rail pushing muscle
the entity is a dry scraping sound down by the LEDs
heads spoke a language the entity heard
withered words devouring the mouth of meaning
J.X. with the sledge to swing into
the boards we wheeled
into the woods
the strings of an instrument under the river’s wiring
what was bickering what was healing
in the broadcast twilight you never knew was a garden
●
to view that chaos’ changes arrayed around the code
around this planet under glass like onyx like gold like analogical madness
a street to stroll, slush viewed over something
everything must pass to smooth
everything must pass
surfaces boards fill with didn’t
●
down on the humid tile clicking grass to grow back
stoked through a vent or slash of football into separate trailers down in the stinking silver
in silence play a game of contact in one kind
of public like all things do if you landed unmoved
you threw the ramp
lines, platforms, streets, stairs, how
we make a wheel that keeps on reading
●
her son thinks technical school is a joke
so push scissors through my throat
back to bang dirt digging into doubles
wind dwell naked in the morning planet
call it a clog
beautiful rich soil highway sign
and desire for endless combat
were all these paychecks
your dead grade school friend sending you a message
urging you to check out a Best Buy gift card contest?
second shift, Friday night 10:48 PM overflowing the annulus
how it is to wake chewing dirt into love that was once people
and in my heart I feel I am the smell of sulfur
just before you both hanging on a graceful fixture
to this flushing toilet ride a flood
of carrot peels your tongue sails no blossoms
and it means a lot to you—to take a right to tear this project down on the shift
no progress no sleep
feeding books into a machine outcomes
green, green, green!
●
second shift, Friday night, 10:45 PM worn as if by men
talks to the same house you couldn’t grow
lights green/red in incalculable return
what can we do, stillness, only exhaling
the way following unseen cargo, the entity’s own
deeper mouth brushing familiar blossoms across
my nose in the darkness the room the yawing dullness
from warehouse rafters where we is a collision
to give a very heavy falling
all things do but you keep reading
time will push through the wall the conveyor line
but we will be just a portion
of absence opened to a photograph of rustbelt ruin
the spine I learned history had been
a canopy of petals ending with cancer
the increased resolution of bliss
AMNESIA ’13
●
And vomited and trickled and fungus and building
so turn back
look across the river, the cold bite the thigh
or turn back
to the house is in flames it is in flames
to turn back
to vomited and morning and upstream and built
in waders walk down the honey
massive and labyrinth like water to sand
children birth plastic bag systems
in a melancholy cocoon
a thigh the dream the city that drinks
down an unimaginable blueprint
to powder left on a strip
●
Diorama seam dust
mold of the leaves, apples of May
working down morning
walking the chatter
the speaker looks bored
because he sees a box the theatre the world
houses huddle eroding stone crossings
Adams St. to eighteen block archive
everywhere everywhere everywhere
dream home fine filaments of suspended roots
kill the connection bailiff
kill the disconnection bailiff
kill kill kill kill kill
friend friend friend friend friend
this wonderful tantrum feeds its enclosure
bridges built enough to become
a bombing of sorts, a parting of ways
a success duly intended
●
You and snow as if the abridging
between arrangements of houses extinguishes
work falling softly through the trees
as if the two ends could not embrace
on a crate a mattress drains
septic ships breathe algae flowers
so a belt appears around your head
a steel-toed church accordion
men demolish 7th and Bentz
city verticals becoming the epic fountain
all sewers plunge shitlight holidays
is there a room to sift horizontal suns
oyster beds
to hold life in life
an injury to the head
good enough, however able
you see the reason I walk
around this question of fault
●
Shovels click sine cataclysm water
electrifying the anodized moon
sit on the entities’ thighs
I mean in my dead
houses’ shuffle circles the stars
look up from production
look up: the end
creeping flowing twitching growing
it needs a location
to exercise its math on the blue to red or 48 bus
with who staples roof shingles who sweats DT
aquarium sound silt obscuring the shot
This That and And and And the greatest degradation
from nonpoint sources
is this nice couch and long rectangular windows facing the carnage
●
As if each path were slenderly opposed
by some wonderful image buried in packing peanuts
stars of color peddling between loaded cars
eat it all
or let me watch
snow across two planets on a fine wire mesh
putting lips to who carries what slips
water or small seed
flushed through the rind of a pumpkin
piss tank dye sinks the morning
frayed like the gloves mom wore
on the manufactory line
against little stones chip chip the laws
of change, the stream a tin thinning
where you walk the gravel loop
●
I want to tell you about my sentimental dream
of quietly weeping angels
and the sperm of some world devouring machine
where the roof clutches sand
to see the dot matrix end meet the beginning
you have to turn away
the water is deep
in a Baltimore spring’s first flower
petrified to stand and smile for six shifts, ten hours
—-
Joe Hall is the author of three books of poetry: Pigafetta Is My Wife (Black Ocean 2010), The Devotional Poems (Black Ocean 2013), and, in collaboration with Chad Hardy, The Container Store Vols I & II (SpringGun 2012). He currently resides with fellow poet Cheryl Quimba in Buffalo, New York, where Hall is studying commons, excess, waste flows, and poetics.