by dan raphael
Post-Urban Planning
if the fighter jets cruised just above the freeway
and all the cars and trucks were up in the clouds
would it sound any different?
what would that do to the daily commute
traffic reporters replaced by drones
rivers without water, cities no one’s lived in yet
so much unoccupied space where the only barriers
are distance, gravity and a lack of oxygen
let the robots live where we can’t
while on another earth in another galaxy
petroleum never became, the smaller dinosaurs
kept evolving, some unexplainable phenomenon
halved gravity, freeing more magma
ocean canyons nearing the wormhole at the center
samples are saved and returned
evolution is a maze of paths, pressures, chance
a one-time turn, my left is your right
making room for each other to go through
out the corner of my eye I see a split second from now
not forgotten just wandering for a couple decades
unable to tell where it’s been, creating the was in real time
time we can’t see but micro-react to variously
from heat to itch to mouthless song
hunger or exhaustion? thirst or panic?
amnesia sparked my creativity, gestures
from a foreign language, my ribs keep wanting to flip open
unaware my feathers are long gone,
my bones a mix of libraries and waste sites
dancing among tactile manifestations of sound,
light in various states of cohesion & strength
aperture & speed, delivering when so many houses look alike
when no one’s home and everyone’s watching
Untitled (for Donald Trump, 4/12/16)
“You can stand me up at the gates of hell
and i won’t back down”
Tom Petty
tortured by halos, by auras:
if i had eyes in the back of my head they’d need sunglasses all the time
who knows what this persistent radiance is doing to my skin, hands so enlightened
how could i do the dirty work of dissection, sabotage, flipping compost
before the baby mice can flee, my digging fork antenna probing the yard
for today’s atrocities, for the down and dirty blues of barely disguised bump and grind
how many chords do you need, as the notes themselves slip like a bald-tired car
on a steep hill after two days of rain polluted by the oil wells, incinerators and brickworks.
piling things together then slamming into them, knocking myself back down
then being berated and cursed in dreams by dad, flowers, kittens and clouds
until i get back up and find another set of discarded clothes to wear to daily mass,
where every day is ash wednesday and my only relation to mardi gras is
sweeping the streets afterwards, making art from others’ over-indulgences,
what they had no intention of containing, trying used neoprene gloves and condoms on for size.
when asked to help, or get out of the way, my only responses are
no, hell no, or you can’t fucking make me. i cast a spell of arcane pornography
to reverse others’ elbow grease and chemicals to bring the graffiti back,
placing tiny shrines all around town invoking world wonder spots like
nairobi, mumbai, and gaza to serve as seed pearls for squalor and cruelty.
neglect and laziness are way too passive for me but i m no masochist—
how can i continue my crusade inside a jail or asylum—
using anonymity, lies and finger-pointing til i’m a wisp in the firestorm
of developers versus residents, politicians versus those who deeply care.
why we laud forges but not forgery, assault and battery is bad but food is bland
without the former and phones and flashlights dead without the latter,
as a proper unwashed taoist i know the only way for things to rise
is for someone or thing to tear them down, ugliness precedes beauty,
prejudice and violence will bring us together.
From the Violin of Winds
so much mystery in the violin of winds
heard but not felt, bow across telephone lines
though more underground now: conduits cables and sluices
rat paths, clouds of fetid aromas, what’s gone for now
gone to town, to seed
balancing gravity with friction with unknowable relationships
as if these two sheets of paper came from trees 3 states apart
or was that a national border, a river separating languages
how do you spell the sound of a skipping stone
level ground at different altitudes
this entire block hydraulically ready
I couldn’t fall even if I wanted to
how the ground adjusts, how the grass evaporates or freezes
but will move again
what’s under the hat, what the hat could become:
a faraday cap, insecticide brim, not a feather but bone
born with six fingers
if eyes and eyebrows change places
if the skull had a way to draw in sound other than ears
questions can be in faces and silence
an abandoned shoe next to a paper airplane
made from a napkin where the words got wet
and soaked into a table 2 days ago
where a plate will no longer settle
time to eat time, a space full of itself
what used to be here will never be erased, there’s a funk
a shadow you can only see peripherally, twisting like smoke
but sinking as it spreads,
this didn’t form in my head, someone put it there
ticking like a ceramic egg painted to wink
when the yolk and the shell hatch a plan
water with enough protein to whip
as if all this air could lift me out of this powerless gray
I’m a building, or I’m on top of a building,
or a tree where a building was 30 years ago
the rumor of a buried gymnasium
a movie once shot here as the apartments disassemble
removing clothes then removing skin to reveal more clothes
bone opening like an umbrella, newspaper unfurling to intestines
I give hunger a ride telling me where to turn
I get in and out of my chair 20 times
feeling the many ways i can escape/ascend
and then the chair is gone or I’m running down a hill
that’s getting too steep so I sit and almost slide
but these are my only pants, my only back
a city’s demands are cumulative, not particular
cats in the sewers, squirrels under cars
it’s raining across the street
I’m getting a call from an unassigned area code
smoke with an accent, exhaling off key
a curb across the middle of the sidewalk
like a bee that tries to enter ears for the pollen of music
blocked by buds, confused by bass
what came last—the vocal or the string section
a speaker at the bottom of my spine
like asking my nose what this hamburger sounds like
ketchup and onions the rhythm section
the moon is a wind instrument with no way
for air to get through, a problem light has with me
how if I try to say what light is do I want to be right
or what might come around later
like a bill, a subscription, something needing rescue--
do I let it out of the box someone found floating in the river
3 stories below me, root nets in flux
spider webs visible from space
how long would it take to record a symphony
playing every instrument yourself, maintaining the desire for harmony,
what does the 4th violin care, lost in the monotony, transported by,
realizing many of the mes in my stories were other actors,
came from a different set, once extras now called background
a cumulative horizon like a flip book of billboards
making cars wish they had sails
til the top of the sky gets so close
all our sounds/emissions—spoken, unspoken, unavoidable, unexpected—
thicken and texture the air, rethinking our own structures/strictures
to move through, to breathe the multiple nutrients, puzzles, flakes & fragments
and I’m what’s left to interpret, intuit the harmony
and discord, the scatters and resolutions
of wind, rain, gravity, time and breath
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