Max Winter

 

Looking Forward

 

Too late to learn a new language

Too early to build a ship

What do we do with the un-constructions

The mayor would make a drawing in the dirt

The girl with a shaved head

would use your wrist

to tell the time

and the lamp would swing

I am part of a jest

a man without opinions

or even a nose

Left to me there is no outcome

I walk away smiling

Lifting one shoulder then another

half marching

half increasingly comfortable

in this new era

We have cars that sing above the ground

We have herbs

to fill your blood with sweet-smelling elevators

We are very happy with ourselves

The crowd says little

a good sign

unless it mentions the spaces

the moments in between appointments

between purpose and combination of opposites

where the correct stance is upright

but otherwise slack

hair on end

from the sparks of fulfillment

going on in all those other heads

high and low

These moments would not bother me

I would welcome them

if they were not trailed

by nothingness

glowing in the sudden sunrise

if my neck did not ache now

and again

 

 

 

Today

 

Pondered dill cilantro,

or a tall red flower

whose name is lost

bought two dill

will eventually use them in soup or dip

sip or plunge

contemplate or revel.

The midwest would say such a line was

not earned

gratuitous

weak

unknown.

The line sip or plunge

might even get the violent flag.

Goodbye city of choice

poetry like greater dentistry

or food repaired

halfway to the mouth

dissolved by the time it reaches the lips

goodbye city of intention as aesthetic

men and women

human beings

walking into town as girders.

Hello summer season of length and of hoof beats under the bridge

of prose of breaks of the screeching in the dark.

A call from Lisa in the afternoon predicts that she will eat nuts and soy

that she will walk in the city

that she will see people around her

that she will look forward to it

but not as much as the people enjoy her.

Pondering becoming more healthy

pondering the flower not bought

pondering the pie left to soften in the sun.

A call to say my brother will sing karaoke next week

karaoke as a way to the edge of the cliff

everyone wants release

but there is no reason for the song.

Falling asleep on the bus returning home

possibly the movement of the wheels on the street

possibly the distance from the ocean

from the beginning of television.

To consider the value of that.

To stay awake long enough.

 

 

 

In Meadow

 

pebble triumvirates

 

bottomless waltz

 

doubled footsteps

 

mouthy wind

 

sentient particles, even

 

guilt aloft

 

sadness passed

 

faces un-conversing

 

clouds cue

 

mighty drop

 

under day

 

kitty-corner wrath?

 

postponed assuaging

 

brainless wild witness

 

meteorites, wrestling

 

tragic happy pause

 

sounds like nothing

 

un-mending landscape

 

gifting smells

 

ever and ever