THIS Knight
The rubber of shoes, flip of pen & gum
with truck-stop cavern, raw-edge burn
wire madness: pulled chiefly, strongly
by thread and pulse,
by tread and farce, forcing
shape, pillowing direction, hot-splashed, miniscule
the ACHE of clouds
the STING of stoplights
the endless HURT of crosswalks, windows
the newspaper-brief, MIMICKING
thudding limit of self to sky,
cold steel rails, cold drinks, cold passing truck-tail fury--
crossing tracks, the buoyancy of bodies
vaporizing, cold
the grease-knot turn of perfumed interiors,
moving through crowds
moving through channels
moving in turn, in spaces,
trash cans and engines clustered at arroyos—all TV,
all TV alone in some essential way.
The lady in her rock garden, crush--
radio station dialogue of desert-flat charge
whose garden sits, whose garden moves with hacked-up yucca,
sits at gas station corner
at the turn-out and canyon glare,
TV crossfade, red-blue heroes in the garden, discrete
overgrown, bottles and cans clapping hands,
string-light distance of sand
monster truck media-voice, seeping
sneaking as the knight, curious,
distant and dispersed
step-landing, shifting
Valium-joust, seeks but does not seek the
Holy Grail of mid-tone perforation,
a pixelated fury on horseback, flashtone distance,
the woody, wooly Knight,
portrait of youth and loss and Kaddish! and mother
and broke-glass building-stalk of museum walls
and halls and baller moves
the garden indistinct, not picturesque
but Andreas Gursky dollar-store madness
the grain in strip-mall, strip-mine fissure-wall
laughing, sneaking, sparkle of signboard joy,
sparkle of mighty paradigm
of beer and time, of past-move trailer park
simple sadness in the palm of hands,
in desert palms
touching, slipping palms between palms.
This knight,
of secret air bases, mundane collections,
messengers and pages and email slip-away sieve.
This knight.
-Ren Adams, 2015
The rubber of shoes, flip of pen & gum
with truck-stop cavern, raw-edge burn
wire madness: pulled chiefly, strongly
by thread and pulse,
by tread and farce, forcing
shape, pillowing direction, hot-splashed, miniscule
the ACHE of clouds
the STING of stoplights
the endless HURT of crosswalks, windows
the newspaper-brief, MIMICKING
thudding limit of self to sky,
cold steel rails, cold drinks, cold passing truck-tail fury--
crossing tracks, the buoyancy of bodies
vaporizing, cold
the grease-knot turn of perfumed interiors,
moving through crowds
moving through channels
moving in turn, in spaces,
trash cans and engines clustered at arroyos—all TV,
all TV alone in some essential way.
The lady in her rock garden, crush--
radio station dialogue of desert-flat charge
whose garden sits, whose garden moves with hacked-up yucca,
sits at gas station corner
at the turn-out and canyon glare,
TV crossfade, red-blue heroes in the garden, discrete
overgrown, bottles and cans clapping hands,
string-light distance of sand
monster truck media-voice, seeping
sneaking as the knight, curious,
distant and dispersed
step-landing, shifting
Valium-joust, seeks but does not seek the
Holy Grail of mid-tone perforation,
a pixelated fury on horseback, flashtone distance,
the woody, wooly Knight,
portrait of youth and loss and Kaddish! and mother
and broke-glass building-stalk of museum walls
and halls and baller moves
the garden indistinct, not picturesque
but Andreas Gursky dollar-store madness
the grain in strip-mall, strip-mine fissure-wall
laughing, sneaking, sparkle of signboard joy,
sparkle of mighty paradigm
of beer and time, of past-move trailer park
simple sadness in the palm of hands,
in desert palms
touching, slipping palms between palms.
This knight,
of secret air bases, mundane collections,
messengers and pages and email slip-away sieve.
This knight.
-Ren Adams, 2015
Back to Last Days
