Matters of State
i
You
bellicose
raucous
give strange
adapted words
& raise a glass
You demand
an upstanding
audience that
race through
the vestibule of
a 5 star hotel
chasing another
Pick me! Pick Me!
from childhood
You offer a toast
words like dice
words of focus
runes in ash
& an exotic
cigarette
from a case
neither ornate
nor austere
Your appearance
Raison Detre for
a special event
The acclaimed
Cause Celebre
of the moment
Ice sculpture
smoking under
a chandelier
ii
You there!
You there!
Coining a phrase.
Your there?
How about
one for the
management?
One for
the ladies??
How about
I ask you
for a change?
The moment
was never
self evident
with you
far too busy
arranging poise
Let’s not
get ahead
of ourselves
means: don’t
complain you
have no choice
the thinker delivers
the clown destroys
Sluice
Through days of sorrow
& iron-cast brow, nights
of water unsettle dreams
to sweat the day open
& drag its furrow over
faces that languor there.
Every face is anguishing
staunch expressions of
appraisal & approximate;
all very well in waiting
for night & its further
hinged apprehension.
Light opens onto you in
fish-tanks from it’s bulb.
You are not the same under
every differing filament.
The city carries pages that
drink from the overflow
as if it were a stream,
not slopping stagnation
jarred in this. You swallow
fish; an irksome action
offers them as coins that
only flounder against all
that is real & rational.
You plead waters to abate,
but little ever comes of it.
Night & day are relentless
& the pavement a fist that
hardens you down. Scales
have flaked to nothing
but dreams that carry you
uncertainly & carry you
in arms of automation
to where the field still
cries in echo for the rain.
Danny Gentile 2005
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