A soldier frames the wall
I heard life is a hallway in warm weather but
that didn’t work, so I bought a dozen little deaths,
yet tendered men are still in uniform action here.
This is the old orbit that God pointed, an orbit
very slowly moving, a wreck blinked back aboard.
This low interminable recession of pictured years
stings men like me.
I was bought, confined in a room where we
boiled in a pool of milk, where we were twins
transferred to a test tube ineptly built.
They made sure it takes years for us to mature and
even now we hang a bit confused when they call
every young man into a two week war, where we
all cook and brew in the center of a picture.
They say:
“Pleasure yourselves in quoting pictures.”
So, march lonely on through an opening in the wall,
where I light my fellow man’s way dow into the
basement of draft picks and twilight trials.
The boats and planks sink in the rubble of the year,
like bottles breaking, breaking down.
The rattling of machinery
turns the air into years of fake performances;
all of us dancing in the center of a photograph.