Joshua Ware
2 poems
**
Destiny, the
Destiny, the.
There are destinies that hear a sentence upon departing & take on eyes that open a name. Brass idols use the landscape as a place to drown those names out.
The dump casts dead carcasses into the air. Thick & putrid fires burn day & night. Smoke worms out of the city & curses angels for their intolerably horrid comparisons: an unquenchable darkness & a lake of fire.
These verses are uncontrollable memories that gnaw & consume the Real. Gnashing teeth will give a body made of open eyes an avalanche of memories. The lost will remember themselves.
Gnaw, like a canker, on the memory of sleep. Awake to a sentence like an immense sea of smoke. For ever & ever rest. Day & night rest. Sleep into unconsciousness. Fall without thunder.
Gnash the teeth of relief. Place comes from knowing those who have no chance of ever leaving. Become forgotten in a forgotten darkness. Darkness is the opposite of darkness. Darkness comes forever. Is forever & forever.
Here minds stop. & maybe they should, for darkness is clear. In stating that those who do, not those who do not, are one of two, one leaves the other. Is certain that one is we. When we save him, he will go to his & him to he to save his.
The ones who are left behind are the ones who are taken. We never knew you departed from me & you.
**
Abandoned Boats
I.
Against a corrugated shed....you filled an empty bus with light & adjusted the aperture so as to wash away memories with layered leaves....under these conditions....you enabled us to ride through the sun like a procession of eels that understood surface eruptions as no less dangerous than the bone & mineral we left behind....it is from the stratosphere....then....that eyes trace railheads & remake memories anew.
II.
As the city experiences the city....you fail the city failing me....a way to valorize your impotence & incessant politics....nothing but these lines remain & your dreams of disability lament the mosaic morning you present to failure....rain down rain down....rain down rain down earthworms eat asphalt & smoking throats sip the moon in jars of failure....repetition hopes to be failure.
III.
We cropped your tire treads & rusted grill in order to frame you as mystery & an off-centered artifact deferring closure....but the entire process seemed a bit contrived....so we opted instead for absurdities & chance....but these failed us as well....we were called charlatans & forced to sleep in warehouses....through a window within your window....electrical wires share cadence & rhythm....connect us to abstract concepts....such as neglect....infinity & silence.
IV.
In the afternoon....rubbery intruders shout at the possibility of being assassinated by pitched roofs....my kind of assassination is big & filthy....a nothingness....I consider stairs & floorboards....my thickets are blurred....my lover is rubbish & tears flowing in the walls.
V.
A window within a window is layered & presents us with multiple versions of reality....a picturesque aesthetic that contains an infinite series of understandings & interpretations....such as a blue bus foregrounded against a yellow train foregrounded against a white silo & all against the backdrop of a grey sky....grey sky & echoes are Buffalo....as are truncated lines & the absence of indefinite articles....for example....grey sky spoke to me & rippled echo through self of myself.
VI.
Reconstruct horse screams....listen to them expire in the mouths’ of lambs....we teach architecture....we tunnel through walls....rooms are patterns from which we escape poems....architecture disfigures the horse....we reconstruct poems....the landscape screams futility....reconstruct a horse & God in the space between October & an abandoned factory....I keep abandoned factories in my mouth....I bleed starving lambs....reconstruct God....my mouth patterns poems....architecture escapes horse screams....poems reconstruct my mouth....listen to them expire.
VII.
The small/ spaces of existence swim through bone & floorboards....a procession of whispers on a mirrored ceiling....reflecting back a distorted language of memory.
VIII.
A distorted memory of language coincides over the horizon & lets flesh be bone....end of body....the faces see day float....echoing time & words.
IX.
Still wet with echoes as the tide moves the moon....drink of a jar filled with crests & beams....lay low a sound of doubling back toward your return at midnight.
X.
Midnight returns back toward you echoes inside the tongue....shrinks my body & empties the outside....woman becomes man....man becomes woman.
XI.
Memory abandons narratives for echoes.
XII.
Deuteronomy 6:9
& thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, & on thy gates.
Deuteronomy 11:20
& thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, & on thy gates:
Regn-boign spirals on the doorpost....tilts....unfurls away from shin....shin entangles my limbs in mezuzah meant for children of God....to lay teffilin by a will other than one’s own....an undertaking still wet with exodus....hand to flesh....flesh through dress....a will of one’s own draws scripture from ovaries deep within her body....to bone & flesh....to skin speckled with reformed sensibilities....Sh'ma Yisroel....you unfurl artillery upon the ghettos of Gaza....split my newborn in two with echoes of a mistaken spirit....the smell of flesh & sulfur....mezuzah disentangles from my limbs....not of God....I am Yahweh am I....on the doorpost spirals regn-boign.
XIII.
Fire sent the machine gun to heaven....circling again in their wings....fires rise....come down abide in my eyes....stream in sand....& lock dewdrops in sleep....our days act as clouds no more.
XIV.
. black apparition; these bough[s]/ the[e] on crowd a petals in faces of wet, the[e.]
XV.
Upon dissolving....I swam & became an echo of what was undone before me as tides drank jars of moonlight....washing windows within windows layered like repetition in mouths that reconstruct poems....an exodus wet with light becomes an artifact that fails us when we explain abstract concepts like flesh....sulfur & artillery.
XVI.
In the future you will be dreaming....a procession of whispers to draw scripture from windows....present us with The small/ spaces of existence that connect us to mouths....reconstruct an exodus through the sun & wash away memories of bone....we understand neglect & silence as a distorted language of echoes....we understand echoes as memory distorted by flesh.
XVII.
In the future you will be dreaming....crests & beams doubling back toward a white silo with leaves left behind as a truncated echo of God....ghettos for my newborn become the smell of artillery & limbs....electrical wires spoke to me & failed the infinite self of myself....washing an exodus from jars of memories in moonlight....eels erupt on our eyes.
XVIII.
In the future you will be dreaming....petals faces crowd a bough of wet apparitions....architecture screams patterns into a landscape....a nothingness flowing in the walls....hopes to be the city of repetition.
XIX.
We ate all the rabbits in the layered window....stones at the bottom of the sky echoed through absurdities....dreaming of the future....we become wet with absence....&....in our pajamas....shout....but I am tired of apples speaking now....wash leaves inside jars of eyes.
XX.
Light abandons silence for rabbits.
**
return to sawbuck 1.9
**
Joshua A Ware lives in Denver where he teaches writing at the University of Colorado at Denver; this fall he will pursue his PhD at the University of Nebraska. His work has appeared in such journals as the Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, Mobius, Past Simple, & is forthcoming in the Sonora Review & Word For/Word.
**
Destiny, the
Destiny, the.
*
There are destinies that hear a sentence upon departing & take on eyes that open a name. Brass idols use the landscape as a place to drown those names out.
*
The dump casts dead carcasses into the air. Thick & putrid fires burn day & night. Smoke worms out of the city & curses angels for their intolerably horrid comparisons: an unquenchable darkness & a lake of fire.
*
These verses are uncontrollable memories that gnaw & consume the Real. Gnashing teeth will give a body made of open eyes an avalanche of memories. The lost will remember themselves.
*
Gnaw, like a canker, on the memory of sleep. Awake to a sentence like an immense sea of smoke. For ever & ever rest. Day & night rest. Sleep into unconsciousness. Fall without thunder.
*
Gnash the teeth of relief. Place comes from knowing those who have no chance of ever leaving. Become forgotten in a forgotten darkness. Darkness is the opposite of darkness. Darkness comes forever. Is forever & forever.
*
Here minds stop. & maybe they should, for darkness is clear. In stating that those who do, not those who do not, are one of two, one leaves the other. Is certain that one is we. When we save him, he will go to his & him to he to save his.
*
The ones who are left behind are the ones who are taken. We never knew you departed from me & you.
**
Abandoned Boats
I.
Against a corrugated shed....you filled an empty bus with light & adjusted the aperture so as to wash away memories with layered leaves....under these conditions....you enabled us to ride through the sun like a procession of eels that understood surface eruptions as no less dangerous than the bone & mineral we left behind....it is from the stratosphere....then....that eyes trace railheads & remake memories anew.
II.
As the city experiences the city....you fail the city failing me....a way to valorize your impotence & incessant politics....nothing but these lines remain & your dreams of disability lament the mosaic morning you present to failure....rain down rain down....rain down rain down earthworms eat asphalt & smoking throats sip the moon in jars of failure....repetition hopes to be failure.
III.
We cropped your tire treads & rusted grill in order to frame you as mystery & an off-centered artifact deferring closure....but the entire process seemed a bit contrived....so we opted instead for absurdities & chance....but these failed us as well....we were called charlatans & forced to sleep in warehouses....through a window within your window....electrical wires share cadence & rhythm....connect us to abstract concepts....such as neglect....infinity & silence.
IV.
In the afternoon....rubbery intruders shout at the possibility of being assassinated by pitched roofs....my kind of assassination is big & filthy....a nothingness....I consider stairs & floorboards....my thickets are blurred....my lover is rubbish & tears flowing in the walls.
V.
A window within a window is layered & presents us with multiple versions of reality....a picturesque aesthetic that contains an infinite series of understandings & interpretations....such as a blue bus foregrounded against a yellow train foregrounded against a white silo & all against the backdrop of a grey sky....grey sky & echoes are Buffalo....as are truncated lines & the absence of indefinite articles....for example....grey sky spoke to me & rippled echo through self of myself.
VI.
Reconstruct horse screams....listen to them expire in the mouths’ of lambs....we teach architecture....we tunnel through walls....rooms are patterns from which we escape poems....architecture disfigures the horse....we reconstruct poems....the landscape screams futility....reconstruct a horse & God in the space between October & an abandoned factory....I keep abandoned factories in my mouth....I bleed starving lambs....reconstruct God....my mouth patterns poems....architecture escapes horse screams....poems reconstruct my mouth....listen to them expire.
VII.
The small/ spaces of existence swim through bone & floorboards....a procession of whispers on a mirrored ceiling....reflecting back a distorted language of memory.
VIII.
A distorted memory of language coincides over the horizon & lets flesh be bone....end of body....the faces see day float....echoing time & words.
IX.
Still wet with echoes as the tide moves the moon....drink of a jar filled with crests & beams....lay low a sound of doubling back toward your return at midnight.
X.
Midnight returns back toward you echoes inside the tongue....shrinks my body & empties the outside....woman becomes man....man becomes woman.
XI.
Memory abandons narratives for echoes.
XII.
Deuteronomy 6:9
& thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, & on thy gates.
Deuteronomy 11:20
& thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, & on thy gates:
Regn-boign spirals on the doorpost....tilts....unfurls away from shin....shin entangles my limbs in mezuzah meant for children of God....to lay teffilin by a will other than one’s own....an undertaking still wet with exodus....hand to flesh....flesh through dress....a will of one’s own draws scripture from ovaries deep within her body....to bone & flesh....to skin speckled with reformed sensibilities....Sh'ma Yisroel....you unfurl artillery upon the ghettos of Gaza....split my newborn in two with echoes of a mistaken spirit....the smell of flesh & sulfur....mezuzah disentangles from my limbs....not of God....I am Yahweh am I....on the doorpost spirals regn-boign.
XIII.
Fire sent the machine gun to heaven....circling again in their wings....fires rise....come down abide in my eyes....stream in sand....& lock dewdrops in sleep....our days act as clouds no more.
XIV.
. black apparition; these bough[s]/ the[e] on crowd a petals in faces of wet, the[e.]
XV.
Upon dissolving....I swam & became an echo of what was undone before me as tides drank jars of moonlight....washing windows within windows layered like repetition in mouths that reconstruct poems....an exodus wet with light becomes an artifact that fails us when we explain abstract concepts like flesh....sulfur & artillery.
XVI.
In the future you will be dreaming....a procession of whispers to draw scripture from windows....present us with The small/ spaces of existence that connect us to mouths....reconstruct an exodus through the sun & wash away memories of bone....we understand neglect & silence as a distorted language of echoes....we understand echoes as memory distorted by flesh.
XVII.
In the future you will be dreaming....crests & beams doubling back toward a white silo with leaves left behind as a truncated echo of God....ghettos for my newborn become the smell of artillery & limbs....electrical wires spoke to me & failed the infinite self of myself....washing an exodus from jars of memories in moonlight....eels erupt on our eyes.
XVIII.
In the future you will be dreaming....petals faces crowd a bough of wet apparitions....architecture screams patterns into a landscape....a nothingness flowing in the walls....hopes to be the city of repetition.
XIX.
We ate all the rabbits in the layered window....stones at the bottom of the sky echoed through absurdities....dreaming of the future....we become wet with absence....&....in our pajamas....shout....but I am tired of apples speaking now....wash leaves inside jars of eyes.
XX.
Light abandons silence for rabbits.
**
return to sawbuck 1.9
**
Joshua A Ware lives in Denver where he teaches writing at the University of Colorado at Denver; this fall he will pursue his PhD at the University of Nebraska. His work has appeared in such journals as the Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, Mobius, Past Simple, & is forthcoming in the Sonora Review & Word For/Word.
