New Poems by Richard Martin, our man in Boston

Happy Containers of You

 

I’m out of archetypes and crayons

and feel lousy for names

It’s time to wait

Words for moon and the absence

of one in a solar sky

have been detained or lost

in a field of fragile mistakes

This is what orange has done to me –

why mechanisms of yesterday

plummet through wispy smoke

Porous mind wants in and glides

above an aftermath of symbols

Struggle predicted –

the honed bridge of desire

resistant to foot traffic

Sky ascends into still more sky

Looking at what is

(post-molecular floor plans)

in the presence

of a silent alphabet

Nerves of beauty

and abandonment

post notes for all to see

Crack codes for joy

Say no when

vacating premises

 

Free Immanuel Kant

 

 Objects defy perception

Over the right shoulder the politics of privilege

maintains the notion of privilege –

limited government 

enough global gas to clog an avalanche

Bus exhaust and green energy

refuse to mate in front of polarized cameras

Words are political

Spacetime is an intuition of the mind

Get over it

The “I” of tomorrow assumes

the position  SOS say

or a bottle afloat in a cosmic sea

It will get there –

at least close enough 

to proclaim Alien Universe

That’s right

Alienation is still the theme

The parade of existentialists marching

in avant-garde commercials for T-Mobil

has texted despair

Release the prisoner or HELP

I need somebody

Thanks to the Beatles

You decide

 

Life Behind

 

We were lovers

before the arrow of time imploded

in a cracked egg of defiance

Magic played heartache

I wanted to make sense

after the certitude of Descartes

Twitter was an imaginary game

between kings and subjects –

Sports Radio a concept

in the distant womb of media

The demand to stay present accelerated

into Go Daddy and bit players

in the House of the Rising Sun

Someone had to make sense

after the Public Option of Surrealism

Language went hysterical

in the town hall meetings of tomorrow

What was left alternated

between the red-shift of stars

and the blue-shift among them

The universe re-bubbled into bubbly

Authenticity framed compassion

into a platform for the people

I left home

in a backpack of rivers

Tenacity cooled fingertips

 

Distracted Semiotics

 

Things are being proposed

in the caverns of interpretation

People have tired of disasters

The colossal bank of signs

is too big to collapse

If the planet is an undivided stone

of metaphor and pale dreams

then we should understand polis

as the absence of place

when the universe initiates

a borderless war among words

while we talk to each other

on the cell about talking

to each other on the cell

We’re dropped souls of disconnection

The maze of missed opportunities

to comprehend what’s happening

trumps epistemology

Tentacles of media probe bedrooms –

the way we admire naked mirrors

or the warmth of body

I am the referent

in the street waving to you

as delivery trucks

with genetically altered vegetables

make their way to market

 

Between Innings

 

We’re waiting to be initiated

into the wonderful

Beauty sings the body automatic

when it struts through doors

of prescriptive prophecies

The history of the mind

incorporates line breaks

and subliminal messages disguised

as exotic dancers

to the set the stage for revelation

Left on a saucer of moon

metaphor challenges humor

to a duality

The streets are cleared

while drug rehabilitation centers

for moody stars

morph into demolition derbies

Conspiratorial nods and winks intrigue

an audience sucking meaning

through anorexic straws

Knowledge topples into the unknown

Love contracts and expands

Heads up

Dead authors have returned

to watch the ball game

in spiritual gear