Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Cardinal Motions, Michael McCulloh




Leaning up against
All cardinal motions

When frozen

Otherwise roiling out,
Wraithsmoke:

Exhalation compressed
Or otherwise decompressed

By a slight flaw
In the mathematics
Of distance

Washes over
The battered trails

And curdled mud,

I had a bad day once.

I found my way down through
The hideous freeways

Clanking and guttering

To a very long, silent stretch
Of dangerous rocksand

Deserted,

For such things existed then
On the edge of Mall-hell

Where the riptide threatened
And generated signs of warning

Against itself

I think I dipped my toe in
And then dived

And paddled around
And wallowed

In the deadly contagion of
Riptide

Without the slightest
Inoculation of
Lifeguard

And the grains of rocksand
Though not your classical

Powders of seaside comfort,
Were the very diamond fragments

The very purest remnant
Of any bang

Big or otherwise
That might have shattered them

Into such a raw state
There by the unfettered
Desert of no boundary

And I think now
That I knew the future:

Walking by a corner several times
That had some wispy tree
With cranberries in it

Ought to paint that tree
Somebody

It has a pretty good
Corner under it…

And I think then
That I lost my
Fear of sharks

Knowing that
I had become one
Of the riptides myself

Such a pretty place
Down through the Clanking
Beyond the edge of the Hell-mall

I remember that place
As the definition
Of battleship gray

Without the blood
And without the fire and kamikazes

Just a shard-diamond sharksoup
In a free-wailing whirlpool
Of no fear…

I did have a sinking feeling
Because the loss of then
Was happening

Then as it is now

But I didn’t have vagrant books
Or planted thoughts
Or any possessions

Beyond prurient organs
And a blob of clothing

Left to the vengeance of any tide
And that loss of then
Still seems to bother me now

When cranberries don’t grow
In trees
On just any corner

Just on my corner now

When the exhalations beyond cardinal action
Blow me out of the present

Into all other shattered winters
Of loss and never

But that wasn’t
The bad day part…

Actually,
I’m just not sure at all

There might have been
Some demented
Woman involved…

Maybe she spruced up
Some quarrel
To ruin the day for all time

I should try to remember…

I’d like to count her in too
You know

Maybe name her
A frozen fiend
Of the bad mathematics

Maybe call her
A smoke friend.

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Greetings, My name is Jon Landon. I am a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. I I can write everything from Poetry to Technical Writing, I am a UC Berkeley Alumni ('88)