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I've got a searchlight that goes on in my head
I've got a searchlight
bringing back all of our long-lost friends I've got a searchlight
and there's a bucket with a rim of frost
and there's a rainspout where the water comes down on me
and I can taste the shingles in the water
and I can taste the dust of long-winding roads
it makes a hallway
through the bodies of mercurial girls
it stuns pigeons as they peck at the lawn
it stains dirt pathways with a nuclear light
it scans a golf course and a forest and a high-school friend
and in the mornings it remembers the neon streets
it just barely casts a flare on grandmother
it sees the leaves falling on her folded hands
it sees the searchlight flicking on and off in her eyes
I've got a searchlight but it's starting to ebb like a star
and what's projected is a light dying at the source
I've got a searchlight that goes on in my head I've got a searchlight
she's petting a row of slugs
as they move past with their antenna trembling
she's driving her rickety car through a ditch
simultaneously
with the radio blasting
something like a harmonium
being dropped from a skyscraper
and landing in an artificial pond
she's sitting atop the refrigerator
with her legs under her
rocking back and forth
as meat slides off the lower shelf
and hits the floor with a tired-sounding flop
she's ripping the upholstry with little scissors
and landing in an artificial pond
she's petting a row of slugs
as they move by with their political signs trembling
she's moving their hair out of their ears
and spitting on their clay
after it's finished
There is this music, there is this voice,
beyond prophecy and beyond prediction;
and it flows from the paths in the hills,
from the bodies of those who faithfully make love
to the sound of falling tenements.
And we hold this music in our hands
like the tentacles of a disembodied jellyfish,
drained of poison, neutral as a glass of water.
And we find the right notes to enliven
the limbs of this baby,
this baby with the skin of a lilypad
and eyes of volcanic paper.
And I ask for that voice from the mountains,
and that fire from under ocean floors
to fill me and elevate me
above the powers of the government.
I kiss the stained velvet at the altar,
and face oppression with the poise
and oblivion of the blue heron,
asking the eyes of all birds
to fill my hands and feet with vision
and guide me to the blood-speckled rooftops
of this town.
And we amplify the voices of all those
who have been in hiding, crouching below
the streams of their own music in the air;
and they come as a chorus, and they arrive
from all the neglected places, they come
as a lake of shimmering hands to lift you up.
And even in the filth of cities, even
as you bathe in ammonia and bleach
and the sun is kept prisoner
in a red brick bedroom;
as the paws of the last dragonfly
find a bruised knuckle on the back
of your aching left hand—
there are those who will never abandon you,
and they come from the ghostly framework
of destroyed steamboats,
and they come from the flypaper of forgotten towns,
and they come from a magnetic dimple
on the face of earth's water, to lift you up.
Luke Buckham says, "Current poetry, despite the fact that people like Simic & Sapphire have published great work, has become cluttered with cowardly, cliched, unmemorable verse. One of the most admirable features of humanity is that while the general public does it's job to keep fads & advertisers comfortably alive, the counterculture usually manages to preserve superb art. We can access work by Hieronymous Bosch even though he died nearly 500 years ago. Still, the work of great poets like Micheline & Norse has gone out of print, and this is shameful. It means that the counterculture could be doing a much better job."