Speculation into the investigation:
An inked manuscript penned by sure hand,
billowing dark Satanic mills,
a winged and weightless choir,
shadow of a blooming oak
across the bowling alley,
7 – Eleven coffee to go,
shoes with blinking lights.
Bukowski’s Bluebird and Blake’s Tyger
in performance.
I’m in the
laundromat
because my dryer broke
and this radio is too loud
and every song sounds insincere –
finally Annie Lennox and
the Eurythmics are singing
Talk to Me.
I wonder when I’ll ever
get around to reading
Ulysses.
The radiator is painted
an almost indescribable
shade of turquoise.
Lively but dead serious –
mechanical.
The top of each rib protrudes
thin, flat and sharp.
I can imagine these edges
pressing into my face
after they arrest me in the
grand sweep.
Harnesses and 19th century
contraptions hoisting the radiator
above prisoners strapped to beds.
Thirty full seconds for each
inmate.
What if they decide to heat them?
Loud sirens nearby.
A city wind blowing
through the open door.
A guy reading a
book asks me
if I smell
cigarette smoke.
“No.”
Soon I will
Have a new muse
That is all
Of my news
© Steven McCabe 2013 — For some reason writing this little poem has given me a new approach as I develop material for new manuscript.
Information is a jewel encrusted codpiece
Worn by a eunuch on his death bed
In the hands of the wrong person revealing everything
In the hands of the right person revealing impotence
The wheels roll and plants grow
A man and a woman approach one another
Diamonds nick a valve in my heart and I wake to find you
Dressing me with misinformation
from my collection Jawbone (Ekstasis Editions, 2005)
As if the drip of machinery oil
And of knowledge of musculature
Were enough
In the search of room after room
Coinciding with the rediscovery of sculpture
Coinciding with the sculpture of rediscovery.
Originally published in my collection Jawbone (Ekstasis Editions, 2005)
Seeing the unseen between my eyes and outer space
I was a boy painting my sparkling new bicycle
With house paint
Squinting in the shade of a sunflower
Wiping soil and lumps of melted star off the brush
Aiming for that white-as-a-skeleton-invisible-sky-hourglass
Concept of two gods becoming one
Me and my bicycle at the intersection –
Red lights fading my pupils dilated
from Jawbone – Ekstasis Editions – 2005
When I was a boy in Kansas City, one summer, I studied the sky. It was a dull white far off in the distance, and yet up close ‘it’ was invisible. So it dawned on me to paint my new bicycle white; up close the bicycle would be invisible, at a distance everything would seem normal. My mother was more than happy to keep me busy and found the paint and a couple of large brushes. I threw myself into the task, painting the seat, the chain, the handlebars…everything! Sadly the next day the paint flaked off and my experiment failed. Several decades later I was reading a creation myth about two gods battling in the sky. One god lost a foot to a sharp knife and black ‘blood’ (night of course) filled the sky. I remembered painting the bicycle, and decided to harmonize both ‘sky’ narratives, intertwining them in a poem. My editor reviewed my work and, being a minimalist, took out her pen; underlining, crossing out, and circling lines. In the end I had a nine line poem.
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