October Disconnect

One day - 5 October, 2011

The morning torch strains the murky pocket where night had secreted it

Rising umber–rose and limning, finally, the grey laced fingers of cloud

A revenant flow of gold chasing the stars back into their vault, sinking the moon

Burnishing jet-quick crash cars burning up four lanes, light scribing an insane helix

(Berserk as Ajax, mad to sack some commuter analogue of Ilium)

On the cracked skin of the highway

And

I tally apoplectic gasps as I lurch to beat the reaper

Pounding 'round the corporate campus

Desperate to remember this electric chill

Before plugging my eyes back into their notebook socket

As

Sun-painted, the maples preen exclamations in the autumn flavor

Sticks thick with tufted sparks- tiny fibrous kites glowing red-orange-yellow and

Flipping like senators in the stiff wind

But

Struck and buckled by saw-tooth jaws of the bucket loader

Sweat-squinting drivers rev tracks across snap-broken, sap pooling trunks

Contracted arbor assassins making space for the oil-chunk black of a parking lot

(The ghosts of fallen leaves shadow the square pavers,

Rain-leached into the coarse cement like trilobite flora)

Yet

My mail sings a ping, too bright a chime for

Some utter soul-less bastard who threw a little girl away with the trash;

I see her bangs, when she lived, match my daughter’s -

Is it wrong to feel the Old Testament ignition like napalm behind the eyes?

(Cry fire in a damnation rain and burn the belly of Jacksonville to streaming vapor)

While

Lady bugs fog the windows in scuttle- swarms of red and black,

Pursuing the kali- false faces of the sun beaming sinister in each mirrored plane -

They storm the sterile confines of the building like tiny SWAT troopers in drag,

Nomad about clenched on clothing and riding shoe laces

Nesting the elevators as movable resorts

(Stick-pin emerald of a dragonfly, a van winkle orphan wakened late,

Hovers numb near my view and flit-twitches at the feast below)

Finally

Home, and the mortgage-paid comfort of lit windows.

The woman stands tall at the stair foot,

Busses my son red with her lips,

Banners of gray weaving back from the gate of her forehead

Scarf a jaunty muffler like a warm shout over rice-paper flesh.

When she hugs my children to her breast

She brings them to the battlefield just above the heart.