Vermont Work, pt. I (Opus)

… …

The car glides through
scenery that is only an anagram of
scenery from five, ten, two-hundred miles behind.

I see my reflection in the constant brown rocks on the roadside
in their blue-grey icicles
I see my Grecian urn
the ever-present yearn downwards,
an eternity of failure.

Each road sign that waxes and wanes is a reminder
a mirror image of all other testaments to highway safety
another reminder of the vast rolling sameness of New England.

Like a bullet, our journey has no plot arc,
we are only the straight line, dashed, from point A to point B.

I roll down the window/, -

Paradigm Shift!


The word is colors now,
and on the wind comes molecules of dust and scents rural and right,
the smoke from chimney tops are a hundred rude exclamation marks to my
discovery of America.
I am the new Christopher Columbus, sailed the ocean blue-
me big man now in history books.

Instantaneously I am the world’s foremost expert on apple pie.
narrating this tour with fireworks or gesturing,
peals of laughter over the roar of the wind in through the
window.

I have inborn knowledge now awakened of the secret lives of trees
from inception to destruction
I want to pull over and commute my sentence in favor of
a thick-booted and face burning run through the forest so much nearer now.

Vermont Work, pt. II

The light by which I work, transformed
now by windowpanes into a new character
on the page.
The remnant of all other unfinished works.

each thought a sonogram for a reader.

Here in uncontested delirium the poem is written.
Each letter pressed upon the page, a hideous mark.
Crude symbols of arcane witch-workings and prisons
built each day, coincidently. Byproducts of a law
left too frequently unrevised, paper bags for liquid
contents. Invisible caltrops expelled with plumes of
spittle from the mouth, the pen. To each his own
unbattened hatches and un-coiled lines, languishing in
silent menace across the desk.

One More.

I see you now
As bug-in-amber
Ancient

What remains is to be seen,
fickle
I still remember

The word game
Hop-scotch
A remnant.

a Language

A language


with accents in the eyes
the stiff boot insinuations
the well-creased reproach

I trace the history of each deep furrow
Remembrance like ice water
Eyes blinking wildly to regain focus

Interspersed the pocks
of hideous entanglements
now come frighteningly undone

subtle motions of the lower jaw
conveyance of an institution
the other descriptive mark on your felon.