The Season of Disability

The Season of Disability


Each apple seeks balance,
not pull of gravity,
nor ache of solar wish

to the core, its etherealness
belongs the dream of goats
tended by those unemployable.

The meshing and the washing
off the shore to work
the birth of churchly deeds,

an aspirin prayer, a tree
is planted, grows in drought,
miracle of thought

of those whose arms waste
for grasp of relaxation,
taking refuge from the brew

made lately, maddening sons
rambling to drive the dawn
to afternoon of escape

sought tenaciously, fear
is so well-worn here,
a tantalizing bird stops to rest.

Two-legged bricks heave
a song against the angry lawn,
not enough to dispel sad sparrows

in twilight no one is aware
of pain or where those sparrows go,
to sleep or pack up nests

away to dream again;
the sullen cats fall from trees
and scratch at all polite.

The ones who have no waking,
no desire to greet the floor,
let in the cats and feed them.

A sudden motion is a broken alphabet,
the sink-edge becomes a crutch,
the legs laugh and give away.

Despair becomes daily bread,
comfort seeks out the deserving best
and bleeds inward to the marrow.

Quickly found the scalpel
fixes compass points,
all directions become exact, correct.

Again the natural order
adjusts the calendar
to senselessness, eating moons.

The solar winds disrupt spines
made table scraps left alone,
no dream melancholy alights.

Each stool and bench in a haze
of sunflowers and wobbly horses
mutters against the musty mansion

the slick man there takes one
last smoky breaking, unlocks
the gate, driving out crying hands.

Pineapple aspirations appear
to housewives' apparitions,
gathered from closets tightly

guarded with ageless paneled
veneer, pressed as centuries
escaping the loss of smokestacks.

Angular filings lamentable
are stylized flames,
haughty flags of commerce.

There is no magic of comets
here suckling tigers,
the outer planets chasing

monkeys stealing the laughter,
confounding cash registers kneeling
to incubate evil fortune.

In Africa the radios march
a flooding memory,
much is made of progress and its loss.

But again is come the erect
demand confronting the wrinkled cities
where dwells the desert's stolen fable.

Taken home, if that is true enough,
is clarity of guilt
to set beside the leaky skull,

the drainboard musing
all these bleached familial things,
the cost is ticket and trumpet blowing.

Sons and daughters cast their lines
in oceans of compensation
seeking to be justified

wanting the death of timeclocks,
the bankteller's stiff tongue
speaking cadences of crisp collars.

The perfumed knees are shorelines
of lust leading to anxiety
of trousers and locker rooms.

The day is bathed away,
industriousness drains down
the tiles in soapy regret.

As jackals, as hungry sunset,
the highway is unfolded miles
driven by flexed eyes

seeing the odometer
shatter ligaments, ribs,
all becoming escaping vacuum,

asteroid bones hurling
age against youth, testing
faith on steel-toed boots.

All inglorious insects gather
memoranda, organs moaning,
sanctifying briefcase vouchers

balancing chemical truth
against the timeless harvests,
ledgers of the water table

wasting genecity while wells run dry.
Served up are glasses of sanguine,
lachrymose liquors, squeezed

between sweaty curses,
taken as sacrament,
blessed as healing scars.

Again, at night, ruddy moons
are eating muscles, some nightmare
of capillaries, confused

erratic opera of cellular long division,
armageddon of apertures
gone awry, dancing chromatics

of uneven fences,
jagged harbors where
ships are corked bottles.

The sailor's bed is a fallen leaf.
A man takes razor in hand,
starts to rake autumn from the mirror.

Blizzards of pain
storm through the glass,
the apple, a whispered spectre of strength

rots in the eye, which
sees the menu of death
on flat gray fields.