ISOGRAMS

It happens in town:
some big rock chunk
falls on someone, an axis
for the entire thing, a desperation
removing ourselves from the cold,
pretending to be real. Then,
all of a sudden, a tree is noticed
that's been standing in the same place
for years. But back to the movie:
the rock has been pushed aside
and the leader's head is bleeding.
Soon, the blood will congeal
back into his skull and
he will save us from ourselves.
The phone rings, then stops;
dial backwards and let distance blow.
Liquid ice, antithetical, melting fire.
Look at Carlos on U street, pacing
by the Andalusian Dog, our former
watering hole, deciding whether to go in,
or not to go in. Our lives were full of holes,
chiseled from within mostly, as is crime:
a disparate thing no matter where you are
until it strikes. The guy who stole
my girlfriend's purse switched places
with me. When I see Helen I think of spinnakers
luffing, a thousand gallery ships with bats
crashing through her eyes. Green bats,
red bats, tonic-colored bats. Bottles expand
and consume us; we keep drinking.
Mouths move, and hands suddenly clutch
the throats of their owners. Wasps
spurt from the faucet in frantic blue fits.
Icecaps melt into trunks of seem. Ice-forests
turn to ice-towns besieged by storms made
of worms and pencil shavings. Sometimes failure
builds a house. Sometimes a wave's
anything but a wave.

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