Clayton A. Couch

OFFSPRING

1. On to a second wind, which is what fire consumes in its maw of
blue. Territories burned in the process, scribbled across lame-brain
attempts at oneiromancy.

2. In between buildings, cigarette smoke clouds any sense of fried, or
freed, weather. All the eyes are turned off.

3. Can you weaken a middle class? When words get lost in mumbles,
there are hidden recorders waiting to clarify the situation.

4. A poem hopes for a day when such devices are disabled or
eliminated, when the cranes and bulldozers no longer start. At this
hour, there are no legs at home.

5. I think he glued that phone to his ear in order to call in sick for
the rest of life's pursuit. The white lilies overwhelm noses into sneezing
fits and starts.

6. What speech could be so vital that it requires the Secretary of
Defense to deliver it? "Our country doesn't go to another country
because they want to take it over. And that message gets out;
eventually that message gets out."

7. Life of dark places, and pines bend for the waves. How to soothe
what cannot be comforted?

8. Acting! Let me write you a check, amount to be announced later.
This paper bandages any cuts and scrapes which may have accumulated
under the culture. Dana Gioia in a suit on PBS.

9. Shortness of breath and hypertension. The hours when everything was
potential have been labeled "For Emergency Use Only" by expert
witnesses, and they're not giving in to apprentices who go by smell.

10. Demographics have consigned our fate to one part in 500 million,
or 8 to 9 billion, depending upon how masochistic you like your world
in the morning. Can I still fly my flag?

11. Don't. Don't make me do it. Or if you cannot keep the bridge from
buckling, at least let the sleep hide out by the rocks. There the
steam prevents statistical analysis, and dragonflies mate by the
dozens.

12. Newspapers, and a report against working for free.

13. Every morning, something's slightly off. Kitchen overhead light
blinks. Ice on the floor. You're licking and meowing for more. 

14. Where day starts. Where day starts.

15. Make a career out of opening other people's mail, reading love
letters from an earlier century or claiming the balance on someone's
student loan.

16. Like they say, guard your angels. United and unsteady, the truce
was something of a farce, as truces go.

17. Wrong zip code. What is to do, to do? Somewhere in the middle of
speech, I quit thinking and started quivering.

18. Puzzles broken and swept up in the mood.

19. The channels switch with no agency, and nature — the freak —
disappoints with its endless supply of stormclouds. About face.

20. Evening, sir. They're trying to convince you that everything's
cool, that your heart isn't starving. I know better.

21. The rush to. To get at blue, even the expense of banning books.
Severe, in sensing that the complex is enamored of its own comfort.

22. Where have all the birds gone? Turning over, over. New ways to
say, to question why the low pressures deflect. These reasons dig
holes in waterlogged ground, itching forth to seize unseen tunnels
carved out by voles.

23. Portrayal tends to escape through the hairs on his head. The job
rubs joints the wrong way, and can't stand to see the boss so close.
Maybe at home.

24. Dodder. My friends, this train blows chlorine. Clouds poison
electoral college, which stinks of its own juices.

25. What we can retrieve are the bones. On the sea floor, along the
gliding rays.

26. News of what you've become. The party starts when we drive into
town: we expect the celebratory. There is no other logic to keep us
close.

27. Quick, it's gone.

28. When we know it's illusion, rhythms imitate dark. In the back of
the brain, dreams are received, speaking science, out of creation.

29. Yonder wane. Collective lust of cities in revolt, and black hair
brushes against. As it's spoken.

 

A SONNET FOR THE MATHEMATICALLY CHALLENGED

Write to the null set. They jiggle in indeterminate postures,
arrow pursuit and fortune. Preset on sphere of lightning,
comedy of gun-toting anger management refugees
whistle robots' feeding time. A few behavioral modifications;
desertion of techno-progress Protestant project: what is not
a mere sliver of afterlife generates an attack of indigestion.
If the wilderness weren't doubled over, we'd claim cavity.
The cute jabber holy drama; these cares only matter to fools.
There sleeps an exhausted poseur for the old tribal evidence,
a curious all-you-can-eat spiritual buffet, one that does
little to solve the perpetual problems of appetite and desire.
Rather, confront the trick of mystery. Stay loose in certitude,
raw wound. Weather plays a part in the encircling suspicion.
 
 

MOST WANTED

Mustard gas thought pattern
scrawled on the bedrock wall.
Scanner collects intellect proper,
and pepper spray turns emotions
inside out. Fugitive poetics.

One turns two to sawdust.
Wait, sting waist. Wasting. Say
postal development. Rush
stamps. Placed envelopes;
crumbled wing, a country full.

Legal characters, critic
writes a journal for the next
physics. For you, window gaze —
office games I can't work.
Ignorance is a cancelled

preacher. Urban liberal excites.
Back on the bigot, edited
microbiology rushes, deters
surplus. The tax structure
predetermines economic

slash and burn implosion.
Advisor to Central Intelligence
inhales molecular acid
for breakfast. Psychology
observer says, "No dice."