Hierophany

The sound an airplane makes
is what it means to cut the sky with a knife.
Contrails are not clouds but sutures—
scars left behind, eventually fading,
no soil in blue.

Sadly, I have no more visions.
I foresaw neither Connecticut
falling into the ocean nor
the tremulous sinkhole it bred
in my second-floor apartment.

Pelted again with
the stones of incorrectness,
I’ve had to evacuate the state.

Keep the borscht cool.

See you in November.

To narrow wins,
to fat ones,
to pretenders.
To the factory shut down
then sent away.  We
welcome you back
under different rules.

Everyone got drunk
when Congress worked together.
This time it’s different,
turn the page.

by R.L. Wisdom



I went to a hooker
who charged me nothing.
Presumably I knew her.
This was on a ship
of the Americans' persuasion,
which once blew up a
Russian ship for no reason.
I remember you being upset
about me sleeping
with the hooker (who
looked like Jessie
from Saved by the Bell)—
but not for the obvious reasons.
That is why I
suspect the painted lady
was an acquaintance.

It’s bright, it’s bright.
It’s brighter than
the light of the Lord out here…

At the shore there is no one
between me and the Lord, save
a thousand sleeping fish and
men hunting for hidden oil.
I walk along the coast, right
at the edge where tide rubs away
the land like an eraser, only
to pencil it back in twelve hours
later.  I leave footprints in the
sand, shallow sculptures wrought
of endless shards of glass, whose
sides have been polished smooth
by the alabaster pull of the moon,
sucked clean of color by the glaring
sun.  These footprints are my only
testament, proof that I’ve sought
communion with something bigger.
They alone would save me—
if not for the caustic waves, tricky as
atheist preachers, which keep on
washing this off’ring away.

When the wave feints into the shore
its body vanishes.  But the
water remains, unchanged.


—Navarre, FL

All of this déjà vu I’ve got.
I’ll get it here or there
and grant to myself
its profundity.  As if
gnostically through me
has come a signal for
some tragic event’s onset—
a terrorist bombing,
the death of a friend or a relative.
A glimpse of a past or future life.

It’s crazy.
I’ll look at the clock
and it’ll be 9:11 or 9:11
and I’ll think I’ve
somehow keyed into knowledge
that something bad
has happened, somewhere.
But then I think about
all the screwed-up
clocks throughout the world,
twenty-four time zones (at least),
the international date line, Indiana—
And, really, at any minute
of the day
any asshole
could be looking at his clock
and thinking the same thing.

by R.L. Wisdom


Fliers go out and hopefully in
minds expand then collapse.
Material is gathered for the harvest.
Will it be a good season.

It's oil,
not ink.

Darn.

We buried our pens
and a thousand year later
they exploded.

Only those
whose cars could read
got rich.

The rest
were left
selling scrap
from online garages

You would think that the ocean
would just give up after awhile.

It’s like
          Hello? This is a private party?—
                              coast members only.

The coast is the immovable object,
sand a sliding ruse selling the waves
on the glittering false hope
that they can take back the land—
stretch their sea legs with a walk in the grass,
rise and fall with the curves of the coastal highway...

Still, the waves keep crashing
this party of land and cars—
a 'scape that becomes more high fashion
with each recursive fiscal year;
this fancy airbrushed soiree we pitch
by pulling strings both state and local,
toting the most attractive candidates,
who promise to see our side of things.

At least when the ocean shows up
uninvited, drunk and stumbling
all over the beach, it’s been so
thoughtful as to bring food
(even if it hasn’t bothered to
wrap the fish in the seaweed).
Like last time, we kindly accept the fish
but have to turn the frenzied tide
away because it smells like
the savage ocean, and wears no clothes.
Foaming at the mouth, it drains away,
ripping straight out toward th’orizin with
the hooks of a thousand drowning horses,
taking with it our surf boards and wetsuits,
occasionally someone’s car or sunglasses.

Out past the shelf, the ocean strikes
up a little party of its own, hopelessly
self-important, attracting only a few
narcoleptic pelicans, who fall like
feathered stones out of the sky
and trash the barrier-reef buffet
while skittish fish refuse to dance
with smiling, tie-wearing sharks.

Twelve hours later there’s a sodden knock
at the door and whoever answers it yells out,
“Christ, the fucking ocean’s back again.”
The ocean, drunker than ever, is slurring its words
and telling us that its party is a hit and it
has only returned because it wanted to remind us
that although it has lost centuries of battles of surf
and turf—I’ve been around longer’n any of you,
it keeps saying—even though it’s lost epochs
of battles, with each approach it can recall
with lucidity clear as water a time when it had
the full support of its lazy-cold, bipolar brethren
to the north and south, and that with every

little fete and shindig and fundraiser
we put together, it feels itself inching
closer and closer to the shore, closer
to the land and the freeway, rising,
rising like the tides of a million years ago,
just about ready to tip our pork-laden
tables and throw the sushi on the floor
so it can swim again.  That much closer
to digging its toes in the soil, splashing
over the mountains, filling the valleys,

and singing its sailor song
in what’s left of the waving trees.

At some point to have
brandy with a Brandy
and not reference the pun.

As in, “Oh, waiter,
do you think we could get
some E & J over at this fine table?"

red lights
red lights down and total
a buzzing from the apiary,
a bare moon
in a smoothed-out sky

pink mascara
your eyes closed
mouthing something
like wash wash wash

with the moon’s help
I can find you anywhere,
its long rays
like unshaven thoughts
leading me
by supple notion

to where you are—

through cool black
velvet drapes, two sets.

If bugs can carry disease
then why not information?
A mosquito is a flying disc
looking for the hard drive of blood.
Its virus binary,
only live or dormant,
only quiet in abeyance.
Its diamond head
waiting for a call,
waiting for a
pure finger to set upon.
How about this year,
this month, the ninth month?
Feel the month’s tummy—hear that?
The sound of a virus
piecing itself together is proof
that the Humpty story is worthless.
If consciousness itself
is the virus made manifest
then man isn’t the last
rung on the ladder;
he’s not the highest branch on the tree,
but the last step on the stairs
to the airplane
that’s gonna fly back through the
cold atmosphere
to some automaton oasis
nobody’s ever heard of.
Humpty Dumpty.
That fat egg,
that big fig.
What good was he in the first place?
Sittin on a wall,
waitin for the king’s men to arrive—
what did he ever do but fall apart?

A triangle

     with one long side

          and two very short

                       sides

          is not much of

               a triangle


It is me

          discovering the internet

               a fourth line

          to double the degrees

               to create a rhombus—

               one that makes sense

                    only in 3-d.



               cow angel

               clown angels

               cow clowns



          What I am talking about is

               the whole white chandelier thing

               the whole e-mail

                    not just the part that

          has been blacked out—

          what did it say, black

                    lace maybe?

                    see through?

          just the thought of

          my body doin one thing

          my mind in

          another place entirely...


And now we’ll sit down

               and our chairs’ll
               scratch the floor

               and we’ll

               smoke cigarettes

               drink coffee

               try not to think
               about anything else

               just try to get
               through the morning,
               the evening

               the night,

               this bad

                    this bad thing

          this bad thing

               happened to them

               the sound of sirens

                              I hate the sound of
                              sirens, like
                              cash machines
                              ringing, and no one

                         there to close
                         the drawer

          police police cars in the

          driveway I look out

          and what looks like my

          car is bigger and has

          a light array on top.


                    I am crouching

                              waiting for the
                         knock on the door

                              waiting for the moustached men
                                        To Kick It In

          he knew this day
                              would come,

                                        they'll say,


          he knew this day would come,

     but not so soon.

by R.L. Wisdom

An apparition with quiet steps
     throws water on the fire
          and runs from the explosion.

          In the garage
     sitting snugly
on the chair.

          A stirring arises
          out the corner of my eye
          but to no avail.

Innocuous or not
     the ninja reveals its position
          and stomps off.

          An abbreviated ending
     to a comfortable evening.
Things are complicated.