"Trouble in Mind" #11

TUBE

         (for Cronkite)

Loose canister of security

forces people back behind

modern TVs’ flat plasma of fears; throw

an old CRT in the street

and its vacuum explodes

into words the shapes of

rocks & bottles.

"Trouble in Mind" #10

RISK

         (for banking)

Risk showing this democracy ain’t

no people’s will expressed really

and death is a little less obvious here

’cause martyrology’s in each inaction weirdly.

In our country backward money-down way,

daily rather than monumental moments

erect the names paychecks enlist.

Names turn to numbers in auto-deposits,

so withdrawal of yours is what’s to die for.

"Trouble in Mind" #9

REAL

         (for the fourth estate)

What’s done here stays here

in minds as territory un-

disputed that TV can’t deny

to us, though them, they

hawk it as more of what their dis-

credit buys and sells as its “real”:

our we has brought, not bought,

this space into existence.

"Trouble in Mind" #8

FREEWAY

         (for Lord Buckley)

Into that river twice and free

the way it’s people now not cars

going some place we know just as

no peace but a sword no

business as usual no it’s

different now more people look

it’s people now.

"Trouble in Mind" #7

KNIT

         (for our eyes)

Shoulder to shoulder faces speak

a tongue no sword can swallow,

a we some say’s too big to fail;

what hands and eyes pair up to

carry thru is looking back at you.

This is our means to see thru what’s

been pulled down over us and then

to see each other thru.

"Trouble in Mind" #6

MISTAKE

         (for the streets)

Once you’ve seen it, the it

has already hit your face

before the cops even get there.

It’s just what their guns said

from the start: “We’re the shit

you’re gonna have to take

when we decide to dish it.”

But there’s no mistake that

that stops short when

the world is watching

and saying back: “Yeah,

‘shit’ is the word for it.”

"Trouble in Mind" #5

BODIES

         (for “all that goes to make a breach of law”)

The somebodies have no body,

though some of them perform

the body nobody has.

Everybody else that counts counts

numbers piling up upon each other

like bones that rattle in pockets here & there.

Bodies stiff in blue, khaki, or camo

make nobodies turn their pockets inside out.

And there in that act, the body

of resistance is born

when the nothing you see is shown to be

their “corpus delicti.”

"Trouble in Mind" #4

GRUB

         (for Ninotchka)

Our larval state masked

adulthood because citizen pain

was broadcast for so long

in the image of a voracity

where one egg out-eats the others

and then eats them too and says, “So long”—

as if that could even be

something like human just because

we so long have thought so.

"Trouble in Mind" #3

NEWSPEAK

         (for our times)

never no time not war time

time we sit in our hearing

hearing or not seeps into us

us put under skin of words

words necessary as hell

hell to some folks

for sure

"Trouble in Mind" #2

CRED

         (for TSA)

Home attacks itself with

the passport control practiced

in each neighborhood

by the passing glance of motorists:

the strong-arm thought of difference

rises equal to each outside being dragged

to the center of exclusion—

pard, cloud, or person, all dis-

credited strengths held there

taunting weakness spawning them.

"Trouble in Mind" #1

OBJECT

(for the saints)

flat grey stones Cold

as anyThing where some

People try keeping warm

and Others, inside, look

at Siena in a painting

and ask about Prices:

the feeling that the city Hides

private spaces where people Retreat

From each other, that’s what I get,

hands in pockets, walking Thru It—

cold flat hard Surfaces

some People are trying to

Sleep on.