Kathy, grim
Monthly Archives: February 2014
2:30
seth smolders
seth
a doll’s house
A doll’s house
gleaming copper downspouts and red tar shingles
a dream kitchen, smuckers, wonderbread and pringles
carpet, and padding. stretching from wall to pastel wall
new clothes, designer labels, clean empty tables
a cat and dog. the little girl spends her days in many ways
three square meals and a healthy snack
fruit and fiber, just what the food pyramid says
but an architecture that she lacks
one little white girl, and one little boy black
the parents long-ago lost to the family dog
dismembered, buried and resting in pieces in the corner of the back
of the backyard, where lovely mah-jong tile headstones bear silent watch
every night, clean, damp, vinyl hair falls like finest floss
onto freshly washed and dried linen, still warm
dogs bark, and angry voices crow from somewhere down below
made reasonably unintelligible by the television’s blaring flow
muffled by the jungle-sounds cassette the girl plays nightly,
to ease hers into the netherworld, where no thing and no one can pass
No slights. No frights. Finally found, tightly gripped,
control.
Strangers come and strangers go, laughter vapors from below
the mornings are always the most peaceful, but one can never know
In the eve, the girl locks her door and sleeps
waits for the signs, listens, the third step creaks
a pocket knife and a serving fork tucked beneath her pillow
her children smile and shine as the first day they were found
islands in the stream but she stretches and grows,
ever more perfect with each sunrise
she fears her little ones will still need her, want her
love her when she goes
every night, vinyl hair falls like finest floss
onto colored, cut-up tablecloths
scavenged and sewn from common dross
little cups and dishes, plastic,orange and green
from three square and a healthy snack
rubbed and polished until they’re clean
another nether evening falls, retire
a prayer for the lost in the corner of the back, sleep.
coyotes call, dogs conspire,
there’s the creak of the third step
and it starts
road trip / vanishing point
Road Trip / Vanishing point
driving another junk car, leaving behind long, languorous shadows
traveling on gravel and on sand and on stone
over sagebrush and scores of unmarked graves
this is for fun or is this to atone
for sins still under consideration
We stop for trinkets in the sad ruins at casa grande
ask the waitress with cold, black-pool eyes
‘where’s the men’s room, she says, ‘when was the last time
you remember being happy’
she gets no fucking tip
from this place, from any place
the path of least resistance, is a turn to the south and cold warmth
on a graphical perspective, in a dimensional world
its where all the lines converge
color by numbers, fill in the blank
obituaries, horoscopes and crosswords
getting more lost, driving past unnamed mountains
without snow, and rivers without water
passing back and forth between the strange and the strangely familiar
footprints in the sand, assert, then disappear
who works the strings when bodies
with apparent motion, angst and vigor
appear and dance and jerk, then pass
a hole in the center where the jelly-soul used to be
I don’t know the moment when
the dust of our two spirits slipped
like light through haze into the space
where our bodies drift and hover
atoms, molecules, strong and weak forces
things with and without labels
mixed for a time, entwined, impressed
entangled and then fell away
how much water can you drink
from an oasis that’s ceased to trickle
my stern glaze, your indifference
the crest of a tide is fickle
maybe we will get it together
drift westward with the sun
slowly fading, extinguished by the blue to the west,
or north to the wind and to absence
romantic western narratives that will never happen
games the mind plays on itself
to occupy in void and absence, then into dust
shall pass, the wind will do what the wind chooses
it’s a little like a casual magic
idle amusement for beats and for slackers
an illusion without the pot-smoke and heavy mirrors
what transpires when destinies meet and merge
melt into the horizon, converge and disappear
the path of least resistance is a fall to the south and to the warmth
don’t wait, accelerate, drive on past the vanishing point
another milestone in an empty book of snaps
manufacture reason, method or motive
restless bodies become bodies lost in motion
once the momentum to leave is found
why would we ever want to stop
disappearing
dark muse 