IMPLICATIONS FOR MODERN LIFE

The ham flowers have veins and are rimmed in rind, each petal a little meat sunset. I deny all connection with the ham flowers, the barge floating by loaded with lard, the white flagstones like platelets in the blood-red road. I'll put the calves in coats so the ravens can't gore them, bandage up the cut gate and when the wind rustles its muscles, I'll gather the seeds and burn them. But then I see a horse lying on the side of the road and think You are sleeping, you are sleeping, I will make you be sleeping. But if I didn't make the ham flowers, how can I make him get up? I made the ham flowers. Get up, dear animal. Here is your pasture flecked with pink, your oily river, your bleeding barn. Decide what to look at and how. If you lower your lashes, the blood looks like mud. If you stay, I will find you fresh hay.

THE FUTURE OF TERROR / 1

The generalissimo’s glands directed him
to and fro. Geronimo! said the über-goon
we called God, and we were off to the races.
Never mind that we could only grow
grey things, that inspecting the horses’ gums
in the gymnasium predicted a jagged
road ahead. We were tired of hard news—
it helped to turn down our hearing aids.
We could already all do impeccable imitations
of the idiot, his insistent incisors working on
a steak as he said there’s an intimacy to invasion.
That much was true. When we got jaded
about joyrides, we could always play games
in the kitchen garden with the prisoners.
Jump the Gun, Fine Kettle of Fish and Kick
the Kidney were our favorites. The laws
the linguists thought up were particularly
lissome, full of magical loopholes that
spit out medals. We had made the big time,
but night still nipped at our heels.
The navigator’s needle swung strangely,
oscillating between the oilwells
and ask again later. We tried to pull ourselves
together by practicing quarterback sneaks
along the pylons, but the race to the ravine
was starting to feel as real as the R.I.P’s
and roses carved into rock. Suddenly the sight
of a schoolbag could send us scrambling.

THE FUTURE OF TERROR / 2

The gift certificates advertised
goggle-eyed paratroopers attempting a fall
from grace, but the heart-lung machines
strapped to their packs kept them loving
and breathing long beyond when they were supposed
to live. Happy-go-lucky is just a decision to proceed
with an assumption of happiness and luck.
The Observation Station gained a toehold,
appeared on houseflags, had us hooked.
Don’t get the impression we weren’t
all dialing information every hour: we were,
if only intracranially. In an inversion of
the usual itinerary, we felt a jolt of bullets
before we even entered the jungle. Juxtapose that
with the killing frost which knotted the vines
and made the whitefish shiver underwater
and one can account for our general sense of
get it out, leave it alone, leave it.
We would have written that on our license plates
if not for the bureaucratic line of scrimmage
we knew in our livers we’d never cross.
A mailing machine can’t sort for meaning or memory
but it gets the merchandise to your door. It gets you
your mitten money. It’s only natural to neglect
the near-point, the one thing you can actually see.
Our poets were Pied Pipers handing out
photocopies—parroting, parenthesizing.
With the right pomade you can smooth over
anything. In the precinct they were making predictions
based on prehistory, listening to old recordings
of preacher-birds. The Reform Bill wanted
us on risers with rosettes pinned to our breasts
while we sang the same song again.