Standard Schaefer
Lyrical Regression or How I Came to Stand Upright
That circles anticipate those to come seems to conflate
the prototype
with accountability of the
slash-and-burn type
arcades and barricades of tonal intimacy and
a tangible itinerary
trap the mirror at thirty-three and a
third degrees
until cadence and diction conspire
against concepts
but what works, works—even though the
farce of inflation
has always been with us, even as we
opposed it with confusion
two or three degrees removed toward a
song on the lip of a lyre
and stranded in the interruption of a
serviceable lyric is the bearer
autonomy, speculation and analysis.
But never alone even in a footprint
passing through the gray outside the next
table longs to remember
first as tragedy then as a refrain in
the territory, finally dispersion
in and out of focus with a
compulsion to black out
what is hard but rigorous even
indispensable to something to come
trailing behind the residue of a situation
simultaneously
distributed through experience and behind the
vertical axis
with the residue of experience—a
symmetrical lack of harmony
almost of no value against the interior
of the box where form crumples stasis.
I will probably never get through it—you have better odds
given the tautness of the radius to the
bulldozer’s countdown, now hushed—
form is beached verve and forgives us
like red ants and trampolines, yellow floaties
or children in towels saying there
is a small snake in the grass.
It’s only a woodwind and its squeak makes you feel
assorted
until smothered by a bucket out behind
the air conditioner
then walking the clouds back to their
mothers
suddenly content and intention gather over
us
the shadows of midgets, puppies and
various regrets
like gallant old ladies talking us up
poolside
and later still in the quilt trailing
behind you
marijuana cried marijuana—an old familiar
chore soon equated with
jingling your coins or a low wall
dissolved by repetition
until the only cover a radio steaming
and we are fondling
the medium tink
of what strives against the interior
an upturn in relics vexed by
magnets; angelproofs and emendations
travel the arm guilefully as the vast and
empty overbearing will of the place
until by now the concierge could see no
such population existed—
just injured puppets and upstart
vicissitudes, stripes through the right answers
recited from a bottomless boat in bearded
weather. Inhale it.
The beard is full of peasants. From here, I can see them lighting up the
bridge.
A Taste for Nothingness
Boo it’s
down this well so long or spit out the
light
little things I love like the ache
breaking
after a lifetime of
shadow lengthening through the fallows
the hollows of stadium light
the knee as big as decadence is the
dance I do
for you who are outside sense
the eyes are always distractions
demonstrations of the demons
straying and shunning their work
is the costume on the landscape of
your mind
the beep of improvisations resumes
your feedings
and transactions until in a book,
flooded asleep.
Between the Lyre’s Dice
after and for Laura Moriarty
It was an age of transitive placelessness
Your trance was the only scene—the young ached for it.
Against the faculty of nonchalance
slight infinities, bent
like a fly’s leg stirring a dense fog
for the sake of some free time.
But two bees circle between the only authorities worth
notifying
lie down or are buried don’t start or
real slow
a tango of one trundles against the
strings
shallow on shallow no more omens save the
shadows pounding—
barren doubts
fold eight times
into a note or bout of water
the wave gone long too pale.
But my mouth is closed
the landscape dozes against the porch
from the balcony the empty table
is alive
with husbands apparently for supper
and pheasants suffering through a
vacant house
I was reading the rain outdoors
a bird beneath my feet
seemed to inspire a bright lamp
under it the night went missing
or lazy as the late feeling
when suddenly surrounded by
there’s no hurry here
everyone meets in their sleep
masking otherwise all too recognizable
lines, crimes.
Afterwards
I speak
the late surfaces the itch
tries to depart
the one in “curfew” takes up the long
spoon.
Accomplishment #2
in the name of
and meantime
against such
and again with
on behalf
the warm boot
to the silly grin
in a jubilant
tear fanning out
across tight jeans
is the ice chest
full of pesticide
whereupon
substitutions
of salt and shadow
pinion the echo
to the two bruised olives
you have for eyes
stitched tender
and undecided
to the substance
one syllable at a time
and on occasion
a song sometimes
the sound constantly
through the incomprehensible
ghosts the notes
the tint of sky
takes on grace
an inventory of cramps
and torn calves
a goat for a knee
half outside
rain displaces
the whistling knuckle
buckshot in the chest
spooks a nervous death
from the table of contents
turns and spikes
rented staples
where lyrics attach
and with an emphasis
on reality
stabilize the rent
intimate footprints
of the atonal
more or less
not often able
Power Ballad:
Cicadas and Shrapnel
after and for Ray DiPalma
Quick on the drift an immediate excess
mink maniacs
marked by their mangled mistakes
space is bread
ordering books
seems to burn
me up
the fist dries out
exactly as the sign dehydrates
or what to do about the flowers no
one is buying them
like rain
or a mild heartbeat
exacerbates the wings
but with metal in the root
or the moment’s notice
a word here a word there
stiffening the page
who dares to address
the stiff if false accountability
the farce that is with you
other wise black without hiding
anything
as your mother your weapons
weather quotes including yourself
then there’s a cube of cash buried in
the gut
remind me again how depth
gets you nowhere
debt is the killer ap
it’s language slash and burn
ditch after hill
hill after itch
crawling toward the cicadas
until the voice of philosophy
is an absentee owners
song of black apples
cold palpitations
pinkly if vociferously
abridged.