Postcard 124

You are the high lake and You are the cradle
You are the cold deep and You are the clear springs that feed
You are the split lip smile of wild and You are the salt skinned christian child
You are the arching rider and You are the tugging underneath
You are the high plains spirit and You are the dirty spoon in milky bowl
You are the raw gravel-set heel You are the gap in teeth
You are the end of two straightblack lanes and You are the shimmering heat
You are the broken yellow lines and You are the coffee stain on passengers seat
You are the click in the dark of the thermostat and You are the rattle of keys
You are the thin wear of that brown flowered dress
You are the suitcase under the bed.
You are the rain on the creosote and You are the goatheaded thorn
You are the thin song of plain gray little birds and You are their thin reedy home
You are the thunderhead and You are the cicadas return
You are the rich air of imminent storm
You are the cold beer behind the wheel and You are the itinerant soul
You are the grit on sunburnt neck and You are the sundowner song on radio
You are the single lucky gas station at night and You are the bent pack of cigarettes
You are the red spattered glass and you are the crumpled bird roadside
You are the careless grace of the broad naked sky and You are the million stars across your face
You are the pink scars on your elbows and knees and You are the pull at your heart

Postcard 123

The man descends. He is weary. It seems easier this way. Finally, he comes to a landing.
The final door there is unlocked and opens to basement and the guts of the building. Tubes and pipes come and go, leaping around corners, plunging off to obscurity. Some feed the building above, buzzing and hissing aggressively. Some burble its waste off to labyrinthine bowels below. The man touches the hand rail and recoils. Every surface is clammy and damp and somehow active. A great unconscious industry prevails, cold, rust-brown. He had not imagined he wold end up here. He had some job to do. Some job..? All along he had been sure he was to ascend -- to seek some goal in the high opened ceiling clear glass room at the top. Yet here he stands. The man leaves the catwalk for the solid floor. Hard. An aluminum chute drops debris in a rattling of noise and movement. He jumps. Now all sounds are heartbeat, breathing. His previous confidence returns with his gun in his hand, but it is different. It is reduced and shallow. He moves through the cluttered industrial space, efficient, intentional, yet without belief. His feet move athletically. He keeps his back to anything solid. His arms hold the small gun near, like springs. But every body part extends away like foreign things. The man as man is retracting behind his eyes, to the back of his head, the base of his skull. He hears voices and moves near. He comes round a corner to a hall and further on another corner. He sees the figure and strikes. His gun fires twice and jams. He throws it at the figure and finally sees. He is in a small boy's bedroom. He is alone. He has shot twice a poster of that popular action star. He withers and collapses in the boy's bed. The voice is clear now -- a woman's, "I don't know who he is. You'd better send someone. Yes."

Postcard 122

But for us there would have been a forest here.
But for us there would have been a teeming sea.
Is treefall a snap? A bang?
But for us  there would have been rejoicing
-- trunks raised to the dawn and singing out,
and open-faced leaves.
Sparrow-fall is silent is it not?
But for us we would have been noble stewards
of each holy spoken name.
When a final creature earth-fall trundles to does it know,
and is last breath a whisper or a groan?
But for us there would have been substance
beneath each spoken name.
Who will sing out, the stones?
Know there is a sound to nullity
-- a persistent wailing groan.
But for us there'd be no myth.
Is myth just story toward the groan.
Myth of leopards.
Myth of bats.
Myth of death singing emerald frogs
from the cups of leaves.
Myths of leaves.
Myth of morning greeting elephants.
Myth of condors.
Myths of oceans filled with fish.
Myth of whales of ancient geneology
in ledgers of old wooden ships.
Myth of squids, of worms, of eels.
Myth of great white buffalo.
Myth of spiders sharks and snakes
etched in our spines.
Myth of bird or bee or locust blotting out the sunlit sky.
Myth of any place that is not a waste.
Myth lumbering toothless into desolate twilight.
We will, like the stones, cry out in groaning lament