Appetite (4)

If mood were packaged as channel-firings,
experience as pulp, as line-drawings
turned in spook-dim restaurants, evenings
as sidewalks afterward, as breezes
in closed parlors where dried flowers rasped:
He lets the idea run so far, lets
fratricide settle in, decline as a la carte,
the matters of fact, of recipe, re-set
against the moods, and measuring the space of years
against the will toward triumphing...
And so he steps, lets bleed, nursing open space
with visions of wait-staff at attention,
with meals to please and all vehicular refreshments,
restoring to local hills their own
seductive influence:  A vision to measure
against sea-crash, to fill again
with pencilled and principled intent, the whispers
of consent and ordinary models
of old business, beheld in week-day banqueters,
putting history to rest, asked now to sit
and now to be escorted to their places, tempering
the flames that might be seen as flames
because of distance, affirming the local clemencies.
A people acquaints and re-acquaints,
remembering game-skills, long drives
into green fields, shagging the weight
of pilsners and page-ending arguments:  Then hours
shutting down, the parties of favorites
gone to dreams he's authorized, peeling back
coarse light, in these syncretic loops,
and in affecting radii, treatments of story-line
more suited to the shock-waves,
concluding in storms, broomed floors, and in an eye
for character, in partial gravity
and sports-patter, air-dried racks of plates.  He
straightens his jacket because that's done,
bulbs dimmed, and forks and spoons, like
applicable stars, put back to rest,
and buttons his jacket to meet the chill, the winds
that seem to square the mind to surfaces,
that had been wondering assaults, shading
the scrim-shown shapes, wondering
at the wholesale or random picks of fate,
rippings out by hand, and diggings-in
where wild men consort, intent to fathom depths,
the intelligence set on scatter-shot
or preference, assuming the depths, distractions
ahead for them, deepening good looks 
and a submariner's intentions.

 

© Appetite (2)