poemeleon

Robert Krut

A Thousand Pieces, Dancing

I saw this, and it will come true:
A giant will prowl the streets
of the city, pouring sugar
on the tongues of dancing
couples who move like quotation marks
in the electric-blanket embrace of neon.

The future is now, it says in neon
and the camcorder-hybrid tourists say it’s true,
but the street performer with the birthmark
of a mushroom cloud screams down the streets—
The iron foot of an angry robot is dancing
all over your insides, sugar.

A half-eaten doughnut with powdered sugar
turns red in the humming neon,
the wind leads to a ticket stub dancing
past, the pass to a true
story about the insects of the streets
joining together to make their final mark.

In a bar without a name, just a mark
above the door, the doorman eats sugar
packets to stay awake, watching the streets
and the people, birthed of neon,
thinking yes, yes it’s true,
the earth is splitting into a thousand pieces, dancing.

Inside, one woman dancing
to a punk rock version of “Amazing Grace,” the mark
of her ignorant beauty is her belief that it is true,
the song as she moves like sand and sugar,
her motion in the face of neon
hidden entirely from the white-noise streets.

Our mouths open to reveal streets
where we turn to concrete, dancing,
the wires that run our bodies turning to neon,
fingerprints to smooth, anonymous marks,
our hearts to burnt sugar—
the gaping mouth of a skyscraper says I knew it was true.

The neon turns to chalk-bone in the streets.
There is nothing more true than dancing
over the skeletal, broken mark of the city’s sugar.

Sermon on the Worldly Illusions

Brothers and sisters,
we are not objects
nor subjects, but motion
without context.
Man bleeds starlight wrapped in dirt.
Woman breathes water inside rainbow.
Child cries western sky to earthcore.
You build door inside eyesight.

Brothers and sisters,
each of our hearts
beats from the pulse of its insides—
black hole gripping a sun.
The pull and tremble of that
globe of light trying to escape
the whirlpool of worldvoid.

Brothers and sisters,
inside that universe,
my hands run along
the insides of my hands.
Your eyes watch the blood funnel
through your veins and into
the dark pinhole of a heart.

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