Postcard 206?

Can I Borrow a Nickel? 

The one who summons is
calling in or reaching out -- a focus
on a thing, a need to fill

One must sing or
at least incant -- a single soul
tonguing the ineffable

If you do not make
sacrifices, they will be taken
from you. One cannot cheat

Time, that great succor of
pain -- shucking life to the kernel
diminished of inessential 

Then redemption of
five cents -- pennies stacked uneven
on two quiet eyes liberated

Of light. Speak cost of
seed -- a penny each. The sudden
spell of summoning is

That last bit of 
blood-born copper -- receiving
every spoke of mystery

The one who does the summoning is
confounded of any single thing -- predicting
is it to bring into being

The fullness of
what must be done, becoming
no need to change

A thing

Postcard 205

And so we sought
the beast oblique
of muddied myth,
of physics neat

Who's sinewed arc
across death's path
is stricken down
with blood-red math

But midnight's sky
casts subtle shrouds
the feeble eye's
obscured by clouds

Denied the veil
by descent and degree
We must seek Selene
of our own perigee

Postcard 204

To contest a ticket, or  citizen contest:

Before citation's early time declared
Before sunstream glow of street
Before the granite chip of civic slab I'd come to meet
to dispute a deserved parking fee,

A flagrant queue of refuse -- unmet yet
by street sweeper or any other
civic function,  purpose shed -- abuts
courthouse corners and the curb.

Men -- mostly men, and black -- mostly black
condense into a sort of line. Black coffee steams
from white styrol mugs, disposable creamer cups
on the ground, commingle with the native trash.

These men have jobs (or don't). Here, both unique absurdities --
those shifts all tenuously covered by small favors,
lies, quid pro quos, to plead -- "Yes I did it,
what else could I do" -- what cannot be paid.

Justice is, so far, secured of them.
Four deputies -- belted, warm & white, haw
& hem behind gun & glass -- uphold the line
from getting in. And then at some appointed time --

One kicks the door ajar & sweeps off the supplicants
"The line ends here. All you come back next week."


 

Postcard 203

 
Put your mask back on 
There's not much underneath
Brittle skull too thin to hold
your  chattering white teeth

Put your mask back on
Shoot steel BB's touch steel mind
Mimetics, mnemonics. Mankind
its lead or lead

un baises de la main droite
un e Claque den gauche
c'ets comme ca qu'on fait
Dan's mon pays. Oi?

five point five six, man
lay meat by the pound
drink gas  down by the gallon
but bill up front by the blood hour
spin gold by the ounce
Kodachrome 35 mill is still louche

But in my country, we take the sea
with both hands until its is fallow

Postcard 202

 

(from prompt)
A Light Switch:

My friend, the bonded electrician, is
ACDC competent in all the
tricks of the trade & handly knows the
difference between breaker and a switch

My friend was -- top to bottom -- gently taught
all about resistance as a light tug
and how to wield the measured spark of hand
insulated softly within leather glove

My friend possesses journeyman's wisdom
well portioning force in the queering volt
Frequency: when to open, when to hold
and always, the right tool for the right job

My friend says -- power flows like water. Don't
get caught downstream without a good paddle

Postcard 201

  

    I am that fine point where all things converge
    The perch of every bird             -- those messengers
    buzzing humming thumping                                     zip
    What are these poets singing? flashing out so cavalier

    its a riff on time, they say
    its a riff on time

    I am the moving empty thing
    invisible and gathered all in bundles        --wire lined
    fletched light and light winged                            chittering
    all I see unspooled and telegraphed

    its a riff on time see
    its a riff on time
    

Postcard 200

UNDER MY FEET: old heeled boots scuff
black against the spin of the world                                                        -- rollerskate grace
in that liquid spot between
fly and fall, off and down

IN MY HANDS I CARRY: scars and pain exquisite etch
of every path of flesh. Children lovers parents friends                         -- all
carriers of sweet passion rough work and sweat
(they rub an ache mutual, and we recall)

BETWEEN MY BODY & THE WORLD: lives
a bundle of minor miracles. All things I have ever known
come to me -- a hive to honeybees mundane                                        --sweet things
and sizzling on impossible wings

Postcard 199

Autumn has its own demon -- a shudder of locust skins
Bones out and well burnished, a woodsy soil hound
Haunting and haunted, rotting leather bound.

You know the smell -- oily death and oily hair
It enters as the rust caparisoned gentleman
Rattle branch top hat, dead man's cane

The blazing costume cannot sustain --
the demon's in the details -- death
decomposition, ancient pains

Hair and nails do not grow, but remain
Look! the demon's sad dance, no sweep no sway
A pile of dust, leaves blown away

How is the hoarmouth fed?
With empty cold inevitable. There is dry desire,
quaking lust for viscera, the demon's fall fires

viscera unspooled offal, stone
and guts, piled and steaming finally
in autumns dust

Postcard 198

We play the knot beyond the fray
The loop is destined of the bend
Wrap & wrap. Wrap clean to stay & mind
Hold in mind, yet where do loose ends lay

The loop is destined to the bend
Bind secure. Secure is bound
There is an end. There is
another end. Find kink

Find weakness, find crimp, find fray
Tease each fiber, Splice mend & mind
Hold in mind: cord is rope
is strand is sheet is line

To hook to spar bite lash & bind
The loop is destined to the bend
The burn, the hand. The pinion, limbs
The knot, the mind. Hold in mind

and mind make
fast make fast

Postcard 197

Some Definitions:

desolate 

    -thoroughly alone

    -abandoned

abandon

    -to be under control

    -give in

    -surrender to

relinquish

    -to give back from under

    -to leave with intensive force

force

    -pain's own action it cannot understand