August 6Th

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Aug. 6th, carved in desks with old 
D
knives:
                               A
“Back when our common cause was 
alive
And--let’s say--the hyacinth fields 
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were in bloom
Children watched as the soldiers 
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marched by
All the birds fell like frogs from 
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the sky
Prostrate in the streets every 
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crescent moon
Lonesome offspring of which still 
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resound
With the victimless sins of their 
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authors passed down
And the remnants of loathsome, 
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disjointed worlds
Along the short path round the lily 
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pad pond
Continúa después del anuncio
With off-white deerskin wedding 
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dress on
German songs, homemade bonnets like 
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old-order, amish girls jilted by 
squirrels
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In the parks of Sioux Falls haunted 
by church bells
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Like ghosts of applause and the 
earth deep down tire-stacked walls 
like
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New Mexico, peaceful as moth-bitten
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 pincushion dolls making up myths 
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about wounds without cause...”
And sometimes when it’s quiet my 
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heart feels like Guernica
[scenes from old air raid] on 
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screens in blue dusk
Perfumed neighborhoods/graveyards 
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the breath feels like flies in my 
lungs, voice like ambulance
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Sirens whose light floods the ground
(“praying mantis spreads arms” said 
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the lines of whose palm?)
Skyline shifting like clouds became 
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“airplane descends”
[fade to scenes on the ground] human
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 foreheads all smashed
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Foreign cars upside down, insect 
mouths open wide
I stared down a huge insect, bright 
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red-glowing eyes
[does it feel wrong to say a thought
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 “metastasized”?], legs on both 
highway sides

[Break]
F#m  A  G

(Said insect was mechanized!)

F#m  A  G  Em
F#m  A  G