Dave Bidini
Now, try to praise this mutilated world,
Remembering June's long day.
Wild berries grow, sucked through the teeth of a girl.
Just try to praise this mutilated world.
Now, try to praise the recalcitrant sun
When you're riding the pavemented wave,
The golden breeze, the cement seized in a swirl.
Just try to praise this mutilated world.
Blaze the star. Shake the bar for you.
A sunlit room, I'll go there soon, I know.
But the flashing of the light...
(Yeah,) and the salt that stings the eye...
If it's not over by then...
Now try to praise this anorexic sky
And the soft, sagging blue of its eyes,
The poisoned seas, the ice-cracked trees fail the bird.
Just try to praise this mutilated world.
"The Expected": The sky looks afflicted, a sallow, hairless skull where rain worries itself to exhaustion and falls. The clouds are old codgers, belts cinched, bent at the spine, musing benign to shadow the town. These barren street lights, like crooked fingers--their tendons too tight to point or their skin doesn't fit--drool electric wax into the snow. By this glow, we charge through brittle eyelid cold even the dogs won't brave and convince ourselves home, or at least the front door and mail slot. The underhedges, cats growing thumbs, wind the wind into a tight growl. The county's only radio tower has snapped its bolts, never to hit them. It's transmitting them at cost. Winter has lost its brittle. It stumbles off, lying into axe. All westbound railroads are calling us. Choking on place names. The expected has finally gone wrong.