Four honest men

“the closer their life comes to being their own creation

the more they are excluded from that life”

Debord - The Society of Spectacle (8:45)

Four honest men

1. 

rushing to annoy the innocent

a pipe talking

love emulsified as symmetry

buoying the adored centre

offers a germanic rebuke, sympathy

pumping the mash

as fish through water or birds through air

impatient & wanting to finger it

studying the projections obscuring

root and branch

stanching the vacuum

of the windless room

one light on

one sound to awake

on intelligence

somewhere another knows

what cake eradicates

between sand and hair 

a bony prominence 

2. 

fear of the self yeah criminal intent

plastering the wound 

yeah she’s a rag

turning away in the hallway

word out to the herd 

to put it in the hole

uniform entirely worn out warm

and seven years later breathing under the water

gone syrupy with the iced

but he wouldn’t drown 

it’s the other fools who give 

 – why he was talking cruel

making you a beat up cocker 

pulled the pin and cramped – put

something liquid in the slot – slush

to meditate on – and it all comes back

beacuse fair and flotation – would

you think I’d hurt a brother? in the republic of

men, the masters get gat – stash

that away in your sabbatical – 

& wear a tall hat so the lead scores air 

3.

down there i swear there is a public out there

inching beyond the eyes image

even in the cramp of anesthesia

or restraint of the full body

what deeply moving abandonment

to ambush purity in the garden

weeded in a burst of pepper

green grass sometime fresh

under the blue laundered sheet  

billboards bloody loom’d all around all around

expropriating the skepticism

as balaclava, signature of the negative spirit

inches closer to its own creation

excluded on empirical grounds

freshening the gloom with a familiar signature

sizzling fat confetti scarring

the unmarked expanses of skin 

grimly arching epaulets grin 

still at both ends of circulation

4.

to be a member of his love

begs the wit in tiny fingercuffs

wings roiling the chains

taking the work out of it, putting it back in

apologies on the radio - the voice we choose

smothering the light rising over the roofs

drowning in futurist agro-pop

clipping a dove, firing up, and off with it

returning changed from the condolences

with another feeling, shadow by side

helmeted at the gates, full complement

paid to the silences

to own one's own disguise - today's pity

stains the pitted mirror of her gaze