Lazarus (Cupid Couplets for A Home Town)
Vituperative voices, choral singing
can’t bring any of it back broken backs
“What is a snow-blinded fact —
the river burns.”
Sometimes I want to scream
sometimes I just want cash and carry (echoes) of the summer lawn
Carry buried tropes out in mail sacks on hardened backs
carry buried souls out, the souls of the buried, alive and dead
Carry the fine tuned tooth comb with drum brushes
covered in earth to brush myself off in the horizon of new rising
Wake up and scan the rippling fur the destitute
river with sores calling out casinos of the scalding numbers,
To dream those who fall asleep in parks of sleepers.
The night carries their fears, ferrying fallacies of insurance policies away.
Greyhound bus terminal locked tight with chain link fences and linens,
Mississippi duo with rucksacks roll out, the change in jean pockets frayed.
Bang my head against a wall mother’s ghost an upper cut & claw hammer
where arms and legs make way for scar memories of Nineveh at Aberdeen and Nineth.
Waiting for factories to re-open shimmying windows paint can lids pop open
mournful train whistles weep dioxide tears stymied under milk-curled silos, silence –
What does tar do – what smoke indices show
insect thorax catch choke wing in throat, thunk and hork.
Everyone’s eyes gone dry with blurring and tremolo tornadoes
roadside cameras slam-corral listeners to hiss of radio steam
It goes on forever, this surveillance radiant radiation on butterfly wing
it goes on, a Lazarus cinema, a shower show of a film,
Falling snow embers a marquee made by Last Words:
Blast Furnaces Will Live Forever.
The Relationship is Mystical
Everywhere you live,
subject to military boots.
I hear soldiers
stomping through your things,
looking through cupboards
and opening drawers
with gun barrel,
opening boxes and
measuring with tape.
Taking you out back
with cutting shears.
Dug out stockades,
handcuffs made from
wire and plastics
placed in the garden,
hollowed with dirt
to grab you by your wrists,
to gas the wings of
the dove,
feathers spread open
in full wing-span
below your shoulder blades,
pinned back.
Changing the nature
of meaning.
To suit the purpose
of the wall,
saying the subject, dreary
readers, is
freedom is actually this:
An orchestrated psychosis,
measured, illustrated,
disappeared.
Confessions of a veiled Starvation
welcome
to the hard sinewy understanding
you’ll only find in this hotel
is it truly closing time
a thin man asks
his body an encyclopedia of scars
is it really time to confess
to carry my tortured body one more block
to the house of neon lights
I’ll wrap my hands around your broken body
and feel you shake and tremble
there are no heroes left
even the police have itchy fingers
that come forward on the beat
to pulverize the blind
I’ll be your escort into this private nightmare
the groom to public discontent
truly wild, my eyes will devour the naked angel’s back
as I lift you up lick alcohol tears from my face
Two Seasons form a Single Year
1. Fever
To look down on
one’s body
from a height above
Night’s ceiling
fissures
the industrial wallpaper’s
manufacture
of mute flowers
scentless two hands
form of a trellis
over the body
sceptre of incense and concealment
single bulb’s crackling jitter
the on and off filament
of consciousness
To rise from the pool of sheets
the terrible burning langour
To rise longing for first ice
of an idle night’s cold winter
The itch of the radio voice announcer’s
Imperial Marching Music
an imprint of noise
volume of porous static
pouring in the cavity
layers of skin usually cover
parched skin, dehydrated
and brittle-dry
2. Anhedonia
Fingertips ache
trace neuro-electricity
they took me off these drugs
there is an after-image
let’s call it
Rising from numb
to jolt
in toes, in spine
in the soles and heel
under foot
my body wants
nakedness
not clothing
no skin covering skin
the vertebrae’s own dendrite branches
no flowing signals from the brain stem
Some one
wants to cut me down
chop at my neck
Gouged,
but no break of skin
No blood
falls like rain
Standing next to the dead tree
rain does not revive
No buds
No blossoms
No new leaves
An Interview with Robert Frede Kenter of Icefloe Press
A Book Review of “Eden” by Robert Frede Kenter. A review by Ivor Daniel
Fevers of the Mind 