Captureland

Failed States, captureland,
I know them. I go back and forth.

I know the constant surprise in loneliness,
I know failed states, asymmetrical conflicts,
the pattern recognition there is in the detective work
white-boarding my own deceit,
in positioning the prodigal at the scene,
and charting a parallel faithfulness also,
a good son’s, no where close,
his sweet pajamas an alibi
as I read backwards.

Enter my model, mocking my morphine chic.
Taking pictures, making pictures
I interpret him with my body and exterior lenses.
There is that primitive fear of his
the soul will be captured by the lenses,
sold, misconstrued,
worn, exploited
not a foolish fear,
though I just want to interpret
beauty with my old body.

Simple as sheep
in one should think
unbearable personal complexity,
we hover awake in captureland.
Later he adjusts his hair in moon drenched sleep.
This is the snowy hejira and these are the blankets.

I make rhymes like
“My last geisha, mon mari,
we were not a failed state
but an entrenched bureaucracy.”
You were someone else’s geisha.
I was the captive of my own vulgar patrons
and ours was intimacy between two thieves
illicit, but honest in its range.
Only the sky rhymes.
I can do nothing more than recall
the hyacinth of the Greek,
how that dentistry could light up a room.

I was always a sucker for a man with a discrete flask.
Here we have found a squat.
We vibrate with full winter moon.
We poke at our fire. In this place captured back,
for sure as sparks rise all love is captureland,
I hear wisdom gathering brush
behind me in the cold dark
outside the thaw in the fire I poke.
I banish the living who deride this night
and I summon the dead who know
it is best, this.

How grateful I am
for my companions in captureland.
In digital, or in meat time,
my life is best observed
as one in an aberrant anthropology documentary,
me clowning for them,
caught in my cartoon exaggerations,
humbled, at their tea ceremonies of surety,
of doubt against winter cedars, against our shrines,
at a common table littered with
leaf and wiring,
proper nourishment shared.

I have just now the swifting shadows
of a dozen birds as one grace note,
as emotive music diminishes
the snow and sky squeezed straight from the tubes,
clinging to their ways in captureland.
and I can still smell fire on my own lips.

I just thought I’d write you while I felt
the breath of a connection here in Captureland.