WARNING: OBJECTS BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR

8/14/2019 WARNING: OBJECTS BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR

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WARNING: OBJECTS MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR

by LEX GIBSON


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page 1...................................Buffalo Hunting

page 4...................................Soft-Shell

page 5...................................To Whom it May Concern

page 8...................................Intimate/Inanimate

page 9...................................Amnesia Gun

page 12..................................A Sestina Full of Pauses and Obscenities

page 13..................................The Finches

page 16..................................Now Here is Nowhere

page 17..................................Delilah

page 20..................................Anniversary

WARNING: OBJECTS MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR

by LEX GIBSON


4/24

Buffalo Hunting

All of the children we gave to the desert.

All of the foxes we left for the hens.

We left all the men

to tend our affairs.

We tied notes to rocks and broke all the windows.

Sent out smoke signals all over the city.

We tried in our own little wayto give notice of our leaving.

We rode through the prairie looking for buffalo,

suitcases packed with guns and knives.

We woke every day at sunrise,

smoked breakfast and drank dinner.

Our skin went gold,

our hair reached out in front of us and we followed it.

All of the children

grew up to be deserts.

The men found soft ladiesand were henpecked to death.

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Soft-Shell

No one is so solid now

(languid in the summer smog)softer than what they allow.

Sweat drips off of every brow,tongue out panting like a dog

(no one is so solid now).

But try to harden for the plough,do not give them cause to log

Softer than what we allow.

We are still unsure of how

all our hearts were caused to clog,how no one is so solid now.

It will read, when you take your bow-simply, the in epilogue-

Softer than what we allow.

So raise all hands and take the vow

to be a better turning cog

(though no one is so solid nowall softer than what they allow).

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To Whom it May Concern

I want you to kidnap me.

I want you to throw me into the ocean.I want you to tap on my ribs like piano keys.

I want you to dance.

I want you to write me letters.I want you to throw rocks at my window.

I want you to adore my frailty.

I want you to grab me by the wrists and throw me in the ocean.I want you to dance to the tune that you tap on my ribs like piano keys.

I want you to kidnap me and take me to Mexico.

I want you to adore my frailty and the cracking of my bones when you hold me tightly by the wrists.I want you to wrap letters around rocks and throw them at my windows.

I want you to kidnap me and take Mexico to sleep in sand beds while you hold me by the wrists, adoring my frailty, singing me to sleep to the tune that you tap on my ribs like piano keys.

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Intimate/Inanimate

A Frail and brittle heart rests in the leaf pile.Waiting to be torn apart by October winds and borrowed rakes,

it sits and contemplates

the sky, and the birds-

sparrows dotting the air

like so many hands raised towards heaven in question.

Their elegant wings like fngers

waving to it below in the distance,like beauty queens and presidents wives.

They seem to take the time

to acknowledge the tiny beating thingresting in the dead foliage.

Their small pulsating public.

Who knows what the leaves think,

conversing in their own rustling language,noses pressed into the dirt.

They are not even awareof the hearts presence

besides a dull metallic smell that they cannot place.

The heart envies the leaves and the birds,

and all weightless things.

Oh to be surrounded by its brothers!To be light enough to drift,

languidly in the air.

As a heart it is heavy,

earthbound and immobile.

Alone in a crowd that whispers ceaselessly, in a language it cant understand.

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Amnesia Gun

I made youan amnesia gun

for your birthday

you said it was

the BEST GIFT EVER!

and asked me to pull the trigger.

But I guess I didnt work all the kinks out,

because although you no longer wake upin the night screaming,

you keep calling me Sallyand you wont take off my long blonde wig.

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A Sestina Full of Pauses and Obscenities

Lost in your open mouth,

pacing. The rented rooms are too cluttered to be considered empty-

and someday you will par down to the bare essentials.You have been left here-

he is already gone, no, he has always been away.These pauses in which nothing happens are obscene.

The pauses are breeding obscenities

that remember how we became lost in our own open mouths.Though we were already gone or perhaps, we had always been away.

Fleeing rooms (too cluttered to be considered empty)-

and all the latent sweetness left there.We were trying to par down to the bare essentials.

Someday I will par down to the bare essentialsand destroy the nothing pauses I fnd obscene.

But for now that is all I have here,

all I have left is to dream of how I became lost in his open mouth

in the rented nest cluttered full of empty.When he said it was over I realized, he had always been away.

His speech Though I have always been away-

to par down to the bare essentials

I am leaving you, and your clutter, it will fll up what empties.

The pauses in which nothing happens remain obscene.

All lost in your own open mouth

you see, this is why I am leaving you here.

Everything that was left here

is already gone or was always away.And we carried in our mouths

only what we felt essential.

Because the pauses were birthing obscenities

from wombs all cluttered yet empty.

We grow up in rooms too cluttered to be considered empty-because we were left there.

Call it obscene,

but the makers are already gone, have always been away.Someday we will par down to the bare essentials

and fnd ourselves lost in our own open mouths.

Lost, open mouthed with only what has been left here

(it is emptier now, though you always been away).

I fnd the clutter is essential, the pauses obscene.

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The Finches

I knotted nets out of your matted hair

to better catch the fnches.

The hardwork smell of you attracts and traps them.

They nest and nestle never leaving-

as if never knowing leaving.

Even when I try to let them go

they cling on against my shaking,tiny talons digging deep-

so I let them sleep.I weave the nets into blankets,

and crawl under them.

Warmed by so many heartbeats.

A rustling whisper pervades everything

while we rest, restlessdreaming of you.

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Now Here is Nowhere

The tall grass whispers oceans of missing

while the uprooted tree trunks twist in defance

thrusting upwards towards heaven in a last plea for salvation.

Blinded by all the light that comes here.

The marsh is all hallways,all to and from destinationless

(everything and nothing).All swampy sodden stories,

which is all that either of you have left.

Press on and reach up

leaess and repentant,

forgiving the bees for leaving us

to taste their honeyed absence.

Rustle on in your attempt

to communicate with the living,

weave your nets out of reeds

and catch back everything that they took from you.

Jets soar uninvited above

and north highway bisects east factory.

You simplify everything into shapesand then you count them.

You will the shapes into something that can hear you.

Something stirs out of time with the wind

and you wonder what has come to join you.

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Delilah

Theres a town in the mountains where the factories are all deadand the streets lay empty. You grew up there

and your father refuses to leave even thoughall your neighbors have gone south to the cities

where they make nothing with their hands.

At night your father comforts himself

with bourbon and the auto parts plant

where his long fngers were praised, where on a dare

he single-handedly raced the assembly line and won.

The only job youve ever known is the bar

in the next county where you irt and pour cocktails.

On the drive back you like to watch the yellow lines

ash by and try to remember what it was like

before all the work went to China, or Mexico.

How there were towers and lights like a city.

You get home around six am, you tell your father

you work the night shift at the hospital in the valley

and he believes you.

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Anniversary

The Dennys parking lot is empty.

It is cold and dark with the rush of the highway behind us.

We are smoking under a streetlamp

that keeps blinking on and off.

Youre leaning on your Chevrolet white-trash-mobile,

and our elephant is whispering half truths

from every corner where weve tried to hide it.

The light comes on

and for a second we forget

the hard years

and those to come.

The knives in our pockets,

and the fear we have towards each other

rests quietly between us.

We are talking about nothing,

and my hair is long,

it reaches out to you.

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AMNESIA

Main Entry:

amnesia

Function:noun

1 : loss of memory due usually to brain injury, shock, fatigue, repression, or illness

2 : a gap in ones memory

3 : the selective overlooking or ignoring of events or acts that are not favorable or useful to ones purpose or position

NOSTALGIA

Main Entry:nostalgia

Function:noun

1: the state of being homesick : homesickness

2: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.

NOSTALGIC AMNESIAC

Main Entry:

nostalgic amnesi-acFunction:

ajective

1: someone who is constantly homesick for a home that may or may not have existed

2: a person who has an excessively sentimental yearning for something that just happened

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