Field Recordings 1-3

1.

Kicks and whistles

there would’ve been
glass walls, tongues and sudden death,
dulled sentiments, public
acknowledgements of guilt, where poor people
have free verse and milk teeth

public acknowledgements of public
confusion, someone on the radio
creates a distance, noise builds a history

your shared childhood
later discovered to have been an elaborate hoax

no public claws

no newsprint, no white guard at the gate

2.

German cowboys in tight jeans, German cowboys
squared-off at the turns

stock footage of adolescence, it’s
always a sunset, catching a cold in the ocean
a coda to the funeral march
nobody died, yet

painted rocks in parks and accusations in Italian restaurants
in sport coats in slacks and sweaters
in Illinois, nowhere
a delicate lattice of strip malls
purple prose
and home economics

a field day of red flags and deep feelings

mash notes hanging from the trees

3.

long-distance, broken
ideas of sentiment

wasting time with returns
the gaze or exhaustion
a tonnage

lefty loosey the boys go down
the girls go down
determined to linger

a testimony to illness

the cast at night
between miseries of hope

giving hope a public space
as if a party tent
for silence (for keeps)

distant relatives popping
limbs out of sockets

bad memories

good scripts

bare feet