progress, for akp

Clouds mount purple
Assault the formation of letters


Written by hands known and
Unknown
Like brother and sister

Whatever will tie it all together
The sense and the censored
Distracted by fingernails

A grocery bag 20 feet up
Illuminates thin branch
Further back
The bell tower
Silent over a frozen city
Who will save its soul
From the old money
Who will preserve the body
From new money development ideology
265 wet days a year
a place in process of becoming
memory

we are leaving
beginning
a matter of perception
discussed once as a dream
before another winter
short and furious

the pen clicks in synch with clock

I’d like to use one of my lifelines
In spite of this deadline’s
Cliché impending
Regardless

The beauty exists
Where noticed
Depends upon eyes

A man in a red car brings fingers
Toward his lips to smoke

I think we make sad dragons

Cowboys have fallen prey to stereotype
And little excuse exists for this
Inability to stop
To have impulse control

Hope survived in studied relocations
Renewed the occupation
Of hands once thought too eager
Proven by the duration of residence
The ageless of coming
Clouds argue the light
Amidst the running of errands

There are things to be missed
And things to be let go

Happily we’ll greet the departure
From the neighbor’s swearing toddlers
Cigarette smoke on the wind
The witching hour bar noise
Yay
Though the names of unfamiliar
Mountains must be learned
Tongues have been made capable
Here now 8 years

Once it was foreign/ once it felt confining/ once it was mysterious/ once it was all buildings/ once it was all trees/ once I returned home every weekend/ once it became comfortable/ then I called it by name/ then it became what was missing/ now it becomes what is remembered

It took leaving there and
Coming here
To recognize accent
To own geography
To believe again and be content
With difference
To leave again and
Discover a language more technical
Fluctuate with sandstone
Try to make god coagulate
With the same short attention span
That has proven so effective
For the networks
Perhaps the lost balloon
Rising above local rooftops
Is the sought after subject
Dangled between
The immediate and distant

A thought to be taken up as
Time allows for thinner margins

Vision squinted
A life like staring at the sun
Drinking day old coffee
Sick of work and scenery
Microcosm of repetition
Days that leave you incapable
Of silence
And desperate to imbibe
Anything that can change
The conversation
But it’s not possible

To sleep

To start over
None of this ever ends
We pack the past
In little boxes squeeze
Materials that make up what
We think ourselves to be

A song stuck in the head
Becomes soundtrack of 1994
Somehow still relevant
Invisible divisions between
Question and answer

Who am I?

Static or spiral
Watch the balloon slide
From sky to mind is all air
Breathed polluted with whining
And deaf city council

The wind changes direction
After a Sunday’s worth of boxing up
Poorly planned pranks soiled
The atmosphere of morning

Community full of sore throats
Unnecessary hats
Hold the warmth of some strange
Divine poem close to the head
With hair instead of fabric

Front porch sentinel
Sips coffee in dark
Awake in dreams of what
Dreamers may become
After home is created
Uprooted and replanted

We stretch awkward directions
In search of light