PROEM
by James Capozzi
the end is the end
we hate it but for different reasons
a shadow moves over California's open edge
its valley full of people
but you compare the others to this one
filled to the brim with fog and people
I see their fires
the trash slumbers
a blithe slumber, eerie vibe of the beach
where everybody waits it out
strides into the vacant flats
then, fingerlike, lies down
I look into its mouth
its bunch of bodies forming
it wants me to admit that I came here
and was drawn into its story
but no story draws me in
or one that no one understands
or the earth, only
there is a shadow life
it can take you quite literally out of yourself
nowhere to go, no other home, no city
the sea draws back from the dunes'
undulant scoriae
pegged with shells of horseshoe crabs
mini-society
the mountain is up high, the shore down below
and the yet, and the so, and the or
the second, more revanchist face
forming
it's impossible not to think of it
this other world is so close
this wave that gathers
and answers my house
built from a wrecked ship's timber
this voice that whispers to itself
of a presence in the future
summer is always coming
coming always to obliterate
our history
a chord of excessive beauty and duration
in which anything is possible
our work, rendering the nude
I supervise my thoughts for years
my old time religion
though it may go nowhere
it may languish forever in the shadow of
the grim brunette her prison tattoo is unbearably erotic
the muffler rusted through in weeds
bees like to balance there
the joint smoldering in the ashtray of
my sister's Sentra, 1994
these are just teenage things
I watch myself become susceptible to the world
illegal on a farm all summer
in Greece you could live outdoors
inspecting the bay in an open boat
collecting mussels among the rocks
sometimes like an eagle watching
which was my favorite activity
lights through parlour windows
hollering halloa how are ye painting the sea, repeatedly
through the glaciated valley
conjuring those that flared, eagle-like
and went down under
flames flowing over the logs
the wave's debris on fire
it can be done without the people there
if you have something of theirs
steam off of the horses' snouts
all you need is their body, their face, their hair
steam of their necks
a voice like a doctor's, anonymous but intimate
flowing through the valley's
open edge
byzantine subdivisions city of the Governess
when it stops talking your house is gone
merely timber, water, poetry
permaculture obliterated, soil leached
your feet touch the fields they burn
smoke columns where the trees were, only
shamanic open at both ends and deep
the elderly Germans have a word for it
which is totally untranslatable
though I can tell you
all throughout the valley people shout
Amen Hallelu
where you been
people push each other along in the same direction
I go mostly where I'm led
the people were with their friends when they were
swept into the water
headmaster, teachers all
were swept into the sea
it took forever
like they were hacking a path through the water
toward the deeper water
my neighbor says he became a monk
to bless my sister's soul
though I don't believe in any of that
so I say ehh I don't really believe in that
and I leave
my dog Geraldine follows me out
her jaws cradling the moon
how it rises huge and green
in the sky each night
over this chain of oval lakes
the small muscles around her eyes and mouth
the survivors
the mutants that succeed us
what they do comes natural
they go back across the dark lake
they hack it
this valley is their house and
they can never leave this house
Geraldine sighs and lies down
the birds begin an hour before sunup
the workers pull their tarps back
start up the saws
you know it's going to go on like this
not a paradise but what precedes it
the sound of the orchestra tuning
squat, ugly, unstoppable
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