Maybe we put too much faith in the heart
when any blockhead knows everything falls apart,
turn to mush the storied administrations of the brain,
there's no statue that won't eventually dissolve in rain,
the continents are in pieces, the empire a mess,
the fleece full of holes, the rivers distressed.
Not what we promised and swore, didn't and did,
not the terrible things that happened to us as kids
makes much diff. We're the types
who bring parasols to gunfights.
A dove backfires, a dump truck coos,
everything's out of whack since I lost you.
Worse than a job chicken-processing,
worse than a courtroom of the deaf addressing,
like trying on a shirt with the pins still in it,
listen to the heart you'll soon regret it.
The photos in their oval frames bestow blame and frown,
whatever you used all your might to heave into the air is due to
come crashing down.
Not the hatchet job you wanted but the one you took,
you stagger from the feast for a look
at a polluted brook, rather polluted yourself.
You feel like something fallen from its shelf,
a yo-yo with a busted string, chipped ceramic elf
because all you can think about is not there,
the eyes not there, not there's hair.
You still don't know what to say
and keep saying it, still trying to give your hiding place away
making a silly commotion with the leaves
of the tree you're falling from. But once that paper's creased,
there's no uncreasing. Once the numbers are deleted,
there's nothing to add up. So time for the tarry slumber
of so what who cares what's it matter,
what should be open closes, should be soft hardens
while the next set of fools scampers into the puzzle garden
detonating with laughter.
— Dean Young
Fall Higher
Copper Canyon Press, 2011
***
Young Thinking
After Dean Young’s “Madrigal”
All the new thinking/was about collision. Still is, Dean.
All these ideas being tossed around here and there, I mean.
One goes to bank and another robs a school
because someone cancelled the fair in Scarborough shoal.
Stuck at half-contempt the moon wouldn’t round,
children keep playing tag during witching hour, a hound
snubs all excess baggage.
This is the age
of the nincompoop, doggerel, sassy pies
and we dare not venture out too long and lie
under this sun as missile debris can hold an entire court.
The cows have a slight case of the weather, is all. Man the ports,
under the flu one cuckoo is nesting, intolerant
of the maximum, of the heat, with a gun.
What has Mersault done to become a faux?
Camus? Come on, Michelle, let’s stop discussing Fouc
ault and just do wit. Don’t be a stranger.
Deride the cargo. De man the boats. Let bloom tower
over the net-picked fish. Anyway, you gotta love
the 22-year-old who gave Dean his new beat. Too young,
Dean would reason out, for loss, did not live long
enough to see him tickled pink while revising Hass with have
heart soon, does not resemble old thinking.
The misspelled word was Meditation.
He is re-typing:
C as in Collide. C in Cure (i.e., Medication).
