Another Machine To Praise

I might lie to you.
The way wood rots, growing darker
like a coastal edge receding
over the earth’s curve.
At this desk boredom is a fire.
I might light a wooden dog on fire to praise your
Beauty which is illegal in the country
Of my brain-pan where dictators
Follow easily each other
Soft and large and prone to sweats.
One pretended he was blind.
I might lie again like a tongue
upon your various fractures.
And if I lie what then, what tools
do we need to save the carousel, the hammered lion,
to feed him with our hands.
I might wish to hold you before the trumpets
And later the skyline.
I might lie to you about a childhood
When I drank from a creek
Because I was far from home.
It was hot and I liked it that way.


***

Here is a revision, suggested to me by my friend Adam Tavel.

A NOTE RETRIEVED FROM THE DYING MAN'S THROAT-CAVE


I might lie to you the way
Wood lies, growing darker
Like a coastal edge receding
Over the earth’s curve.

At this desk boredom is a fire.
I might light a wooden dog on fire
To praise your Beauty which is illegal
In the country of my brain-pan
Where dictators follow easily each other
Soft and large and prone to sweat.

One pretended he was blind.
I might lie to you again, cleanly,
Or tongue the armor of a tank.
In either case, an incurious compass
That aligns the various fractures.

And if I lie to you, what then, what tools
Do we need to save the carousel,
The hammered lion, to feed him
With our hands. I might wish to hold
You before the trumpets
And later the skyline.
I might lie to you about a childhood
When I drank from a creek
Because I was far from home.

desk

This wooden plate upon which you hide to see
what needs seeing, where you get up early
to hear the owls, curse if you must but whisper
and shake vines with lightest breath,
go then to the creek with its moving shells,
drift as eye-flicker in tall grass. It is here.
Each day it is here, you will tick at it with
your fingers first, dab them in ink made by
what you have in your palm, stain-wise.
Ten thousand years from now your mother
scuttles above the mud to see what you saw:
a man in animal head-dress, shaken, raw.

***

This is a draft version of a poem about which I am completely unsure as to final form.