Drew Gardner
____________________
Blind Stairs
what I
thought was a plant
hanging in
the window, turned out
to be a
picture pasted up to block the sun
the phone line’s
cord
has a
tension
I moved
back up with all my legs
capillary
action of separate lives
I want
you to set me on fire
drawn up
through this rejection
of
life’s script, or simply botching it
broken
shadows of impatient light
move past in
filthy blurs
but the car
never gets any closer to the moon
speaking
directly to the little cloud
of charmed
obfuscation, dishonest
with more
uneven staying power
like all
the strength of small-spirited bullshit in the world
dead leaves
won’t answer
the colder
questions that try to warn you
through
this 3rd St. door, falling through wood always was
the
activation of thought
and
feeling over fatal time and distance,
not an
isolated event in an insulated net
for ever
being alone
too exhausted
to write or think
I took the
little whale
and pulled
it to the shore
in the
oven’s blue flame crawling
the
power of life and death is in the tongue
____________________