He is going away. Gone.
I get near the bed;
it is still magnetic, given
it is also a body
capable of attraction.
Sleep has nothing
to exaggerate: this acute
sense of deception,
sham birds, poor compensation,
the lack of pity even
in the most tricked out
mechanism (not counting
the haunted garden).

The article
is pretty specific:
explosives
strapped to a bridge,
a poorly
trained militia,
a palace
stripped to the level
of jail,
the Euphrates’
leisurely descent
to desert.

Mac is
kohl black,
hieroglyphic,
phonetic as the
awl and catfish
reading Narmer.
He sits
at the door
very formal
having dragged
home a rat.
In practice, it’s
pointless
to scold him,
but this is
civilization

The missing lines
are replaced with Xs.
Most of the poem is Xs.
A justly famous just one word
to translate, or less, nothing
but the black krater
capable of carrying even breath
or empty
cleared of everything
as we do with
troublesome gardens,
hearts, dams, turbine engines
sending power lines
blindly into the canyon.

Everything is finished.
It hits the canyon.
Sycamore and eucalyptus
observe the silence.
Here come the children.
If they weren’t so resilient,
it would be cruel
to dress them in costumes
and send them door to door
with promises of candy.

Maybe it was
made for another
history, or I’m
not myself, nobody
known to a country
I wasn’t born to
though there are people
and sobriquets
for their children, so why
do we force them
to leave their playthings,
learn an instrument, or stop
the games of pretend?
A thing I love is darkness
on one of its errands,
easy conjugations
like the future,
the generally familiar
in a stranger walking me
through this blindness
until I see even better,
so well it practically
burns the water.