Fuller’s Earth

early morning heretics
empiricists who become vengeful ghosts
a crude romance between wonder and astonishment
past stencil objects neglecting its true nature
a thing exposed, a moment in taunt distilling escape

a strong demonstration
Margaret and her husband
on knees in prayer, in dirt, in lime
confidentially asserting chiefs and gardeners, and vows
jewel puppets passing uttered holds
in bane retributive governance
in marble, in dowry and diligent values.

Decius finds her place in southern soil
in market collapse
pithy forgiveness
fiction and fascination in proper resentment
impose sanctioned unity on the poor house experience.

a formal agreement without warning,
adopted as children, as relatives of this world,
arrested development in candor, breaking cells
for reason, for two parts, asking
pernicious lies, impassable depths
in dystrophy and lamenting cords.

canyon alleys impart crewel
starvations, blotches of armament for
stolen witnesses. a recurrence
from vast deflated armies, evolved from
interrogation, from basset hounds, from stories.

They dwell on stolen land, furnished
with inadequate supplies, tempted towards humor,
tempted to decay. rebellion and pollution
fix to the ground, they sing of misery,
and cling to poverty as though it is the last
promise and nothing will be left in the morning.

The result untold by charlatanesque patrons
all we meant to say we consider writing,
beloved entirely by blurred texts, postface propositions,
inner necessity, modes of instance trace
dull work meant to be seen by prying hands,
loosening the funerary box to ask a small favor.

He is wrecked in dialectical opposition,
terrified and childish, he refrains from speaking.
He forges a model of lies, of complacent orphans,
he refrains from speaking to exult the promise,
whisper through weeds behind his ears, his lost courage,
his grave myth he shatters by opening pages.

He supplements trellises for history, apriority
and docent proffering in aberrant representation,
obvious flags remote and untuned – scenes
for anguished lovers faced with parceled stages
built on hymns, on writing, on arranged
scratches recalling medium, privilege, and imposition.

they could never become a happier people
stories, and forked persuasions
roads drawn in sky tides resembling fortune,
resembling beauty. Patriot birds falling over cliffs
over trench roads, over seasons for rejoice.

heritage revives arcane tragedies with resilience
near misses of what could have been
an unconvincing ancestor works in the yard
the soil is moist, its thoughts perplexed and yearning.

indigo thieves triumph in regret
they wipe their mouths, they journey over idioms
for perfect channels, straights of fugitive communities
play on gold strings and idealized frets

they are fragments of history, they remember
newspaper clippings with some names who are
characters in the present, in the groves of precision,
marked by addle folk music, concerts of history,
unsure of ritual and relation, a bottled precursor
for robbed discussions, trails
of scavengers invoke justice, invoke brine, perjure
exacting incidents of national utopia.

between conditions of farmhouse laundry and
spiritual indifference, their lies harmonize
the tyrant and the lover, the boxer and
the uniqueness of life sounds. Spectator mumbles
from the center of the stage.