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Sum over Histories, Part I
I
Pockets bursting
with trinkets
plucked from stoop
and curb
No troubadour
for the inanimate
but when I look
at crevice and armor chink
chipped paint
permanent smudge
I want the stories
for fingerprints and palm lines
for each moment
and not after
Resist
the catalogue
the dissection
genus and classification
otherwise it’s
twenty volumes of
hand pass
hand down
and map point
But reality is underrepresented
My vision clicks
to luminosity
to pin light
saturated and burned vivid
Save the breadcrumbs!
I don’t need
leading back
Today, reduction abets deduction
Rather, nurture image to birth projection
II
Listen:
there is a flea market
every summer Saturday
right off Dekalb
On its south side, half way back
bounded by chain link and tent posts
a merchant proffers pictures
whose stories exist in image alone
and beg conjecture for the text
Another hawks chain-mailed miniatures
hand painted with care;
in the sunset they reflect
the now nameless:
dust to dust is true reduction
Listen:
Time travels on four paths
the line is only imagined
Listen:
The line is a crutch
any path is imagined
This is the end
because it’s the beginning
This is the coin
This is the balance
This is the boundless expanse
This is the precipice:
To jump is to fall four ways
It’s the stranger at the corner table
she has a prophet’s look
she is red-eyed and tired
she is waiting
It’s the street man
he is wrapped in wool
he laps at wind gusts
he begs to be shot through with love
I will never see them again
I don’t need their government names
They are not linear but here and gone
They defy narrative
Her eyes
His cries
These are not prescriptions
These are more than legislation
They linger in the air
that tonight hangs low
spread heavy and
dripping oils
purple and orange
while only the clock
anticipates midnight’s
languid passage
