Schultz Jeffrey - Civil twilight: poems

Bush If, our irises unflexing, their novaes bursts succumbing to apertures Black, our pupils becoming willing to admit what they might admit, However insufficient, however insignificant in that scheme of things We imagine must even now unfold somehow beyond our understanding, Beyond us, if to look up widening into the night sky and stare at the stars, Those grains of salt scattered across obsidian, those pale fires, Those distant repositories of whatever we put there, those whatever, Is in fact to stare into the past, then to live in the city is to live without History. Or is at least to live blind to it, mistake it for something else, Some cobble exposed as the asphalt chips, little by little, away, Some incompleteness that yet offers us a sense of completion, a sense Some something must have led to all this, some strategic planning Commissions guiding hand, some intelligent designers intelligent design. Best to worry over it no further, best to not ask why regarding the thisness Of this, the thatness of that, best face facts: go down that wrong road And your FOIA requests denials will drag on for years, and youve only So many left, you know, so many years before the Municipality of Matter Not Tied Up for the Moment in the Operation of Any Consciousness Comes to file its own claimits eminent domain, your body; besides, The legal fees will ruin you and, well, dont you want to enjoy life? Let it, As they say, lie. Which it does, as per precedent, as we would expect. And you try, Lord knows you try to act right, keep things simple, Show up to meetings mostly on time and looking like you might belong, Like youre committed to the institution and to its mission, though not, You know, too committed, nothing that would arouse suspicion youre Anything but perfectly professional, perfectly detached, the causes you call Your own really only things to pass time that might pass otherwise unfilled. But the idea was that we would not be contained by what contains us, That we could walk outside and gaze upward and open ourselves not To some speckled nothing, not to the citys orangey haze reflected back But, because the biconvex curvature of our eyes lenses is, finally, Our curvature, open ourselves instead out to our own likeness, widened And clarified by time and distance, that against that endless unpatterning A field of meaningful points might be plotted.

And though, sure, We can check the Weeklys horoscope, read that the Great Dog has ransacked The House of Gemini, read in the police blotter that its on a spree, tearing Through each house in turn, shredding the archiveswhich anyway Were only ever accessible to initiates, so investigators shrugand soiling The rugs, read in the features that its now-missing owners beat it as a pup And that its story has been optioned for a film, its far from what you feel Was promised, far from your good behaviors just reward. So you try again To think things through, try to remember at each moment that everyone Else exists and is not trying to think of you thinking of them, and that that Has always been the case, even and especially before you were there to try And to fail at it, a failure which has now left you stunned aware Of the little space that makes up your own consciousness, which gazes Up at a nothing that reflects only its own blank vastness back to you, And then even those things that catch at the corners of your eyes Seem suddenly very genuinely perched at perceptions precipitous edge, And its thatthe violent wonder of beingthat you would want To come to understand and press outward until it could be called a history Of something, a history that, if you could imagine it fully and know ityou Along with simultaneously everyonewould be what we could call hope. And its this last part, which amounts to despairs almost measurable presence, That leaves you bed-bound and despairing. Your doctor, making note Of your case history, making note of the insurance companys reluctance And this has little to do with you, but ever since the courts upheld Corporations right to marry they seem hardly interested in us, Seem consumed by their family lives, by raising their young dividends Up right, our future upright corporate citizensto prescribe for you The different world in which you could actually live, making note that, Of this summers dog days youve now spent three massacres or two weeks Depending, of course, on whether youve converted to the newly instituted Second Amendmentarian calendar or are still among the Gregorians, With their quaint memories of feast days and cool weather seasons, With their old idea of existence as unending cycle, a natural enough thing To believe in before existence revealed its spiral down toward catastrophe, But anyway however you want to measure it, youve been essentially Immobilized for a good while now and what your doctor suggests In lieu of fulfillment is at least making sure to get out a little bit, Certain of course youve first massaged a sufficient quantity of sunscreen, The oxybenzone in which causes coral reefs and by extension, eventually, Everything to wither and disappear, into your skin, because you want to be Safe as you can be, your doctor says, dont want to take unnecessary risks, Want to be able to pass through the world without falling in love with it: To move without being moved. To admit nothing, least of all delusion, The admission of which triggers a series of red flags and automated alarms That will, finally, result in the Corporations notification: supper interrupted, He dabs his lips with his napkin and excuses himself, apologizes to the wife, Smiles quickly at the children before heading back to his study to dial up His old school friend the State, who mobilizes the necessary resources, Which are not inconsiderable. Best to listen to good sense; best rest easy.