Electricity

These black lines,
they carry civilization
under rubber coats.

Yellow droplets in a dark hill
(porch lights on suburban avenues)
and the blinking red or white beacons
on our dark horizons:
they all drip from these
black stretched lines,
which hang from frowning iron maidens
and a forest of pole-stripped trees.

The black lines sway,
carrying our pictures and songs
and so many conversations
--silently quieting violent instinct,
the blanket of black lines bleeds
a pool of light keeping us safe from us
and from the man in the gutter
with the shadowy lips--
and a storm is swirling
in a cloud's mind.

Huge wind runs through
and around my eyes
looking up at the black lines
now snapping, whipping,
pulling at their raised anchors:
Nature struggling against
the lilliputian strings that tie
her children to the earth
in pretty hats and scarves;
her barbarian worshipers
now wear cologne and combovers.

She knows who is to blame,
for long before this net of black lines
descended, her sons were free:
angrily she pulls at these
protecting, enslaving cords.

A black line breaks! and
the patchwork hill darkens,
distant yellow droplets dry up and
the beacons, no more red or white strobes,
become ghost-grey hilltop towers;
new barbarians let grow their wild beards,
look skyward from blackened porches
to reclaim their forgotten matriarch.

The street lights are silent on Fifth and Main:
I peer into night skies long passed.




may '06
may '09