Yellow Eyes - Immersion Trench Reverie (2017)

Old Alpine Pang

Barely heard
A moan drifts up
From a lower world
The scent of wet ice
Either a cattle farm
Great mundane pleas from moonlit vats
Of mud
Some stirring of the blood
Old alpine pang

Or a crevice wail
Broken leg song
Lichen undernail
A life of skin
A blue so dark he will go blind

A moan drifts up
Bile on the breath of spring
A silent swiss funicular
On unlit rails
Passes through dense wood smoothly
Crosses the meadow
And finds me
Through a gap between the molding
And the pane

Blue as Blue

Blue as blue
As oil paint
As trim around the cedar door
He touched the ceiling in his helicopter
Once a day
And made it to his cedar bed
Exalted, bald
And keening like a royal bird
That nobody should see him anymore

The dark flash of an airplane on the sun
Crickets pulled a midday thread
Behind his ears
And made it bright

The crops ballooned and split
Untouched
Red tubes and seeds
Black paper
Blue as blue
As oil paint
As damselflies below the cedar floor

Shrillness in the Heated Grass

The day’s lung held full
Shrillness in the heated grass
Collapsing on his hunting stool
Seed shells like a radiance
The oligarch flanks his tent
Salted thistle in his throat

To the family
Keep the mansion dark and
Full of leaves
For this
Nest against the tent
The day’s lung held full
Shrillness in the heated grass
Was where the ghosts lined up
The physics of the carpet pain
The coldest depth along the stream
The darkest blue above the ridge

Collapsing on his hunting stool
Seed shells like a radiance
But how the day refused to breathe

Velvet on the Horns

Overnight
Or was it not
Green ragged cloth had fallen
On the path
The way I took had velvet on the horns

I peered straight through
And saw the shrinking frame
Collapse and bloom
And choke on its vast ornate teeth
I would cry out
If it were not so late

I do not remember you
Perfect sphere
Chlorine smell
Painting that was damaged in the hold

Imagine that a propane tank
When squarely struck
Becomes a bell
Yet huddles by the driveway in the cold

Immersion Trench Reverie

Forgot the dream that led me to the cane
But how the rattle tempts me
Wide and scraping
Sit and dry
Make mica on your skin
Divide your forearm
Like a stack of yellow news
Muscovite sheath
Thick billfold fray
New glinting slots the sun can breach

The cane flares open
Just before a hill
I see the bronze plate water
Gleaming
Flawed like pollen settled and was cast
A spectrum frozen flat
Upon the gleam

Now gold has turned to black
Frogs pierce the ear
I’m in the cane
Forgot the dream that led me here

Jubilat

Born in the shade
I know what I am
Hard head brimming with pine and gold
The shade
Like mud in a river fish
Cannot be rinsed away
A breeze in the dark room

I know what the field mouse
Startled
Split with a scythe
Knew of his own blood
In the tear to the bright edge

When the strange tree that catches the
Eye among all others
Moves in a trance
In almost no wind
Some fatal grain undone
I know what I am