Free War Is Language : 101 Short Works (9781937316044) by Nath Jones

and geraniums share
the quiet with koi swimming near eternal and not so eternal flames
flickering—purchased in earnest, in contemplative red
desperation?
    Him: Thank God we don’t have to stand
looking through a hundred yards of pine trunks, across manicured
evening grass, to the infant fields of rising corn—momentarily
allowing for the fireflies—together.
    Her: Exchange the lovemaking for life,
for coming undone from the duct tape inside, for produce and
bounty, for the bus pass, parking space, and retirement fund. Walk
away. If you can, wait for the bus, alone. Do not call anyone in
the sunshine under blue skies and don’t kick the children just
because they’re not yours.
    Him: I don’t see anything happening,
like water moved by tail fins.

42 —
Centripetal/Tangential
    She flips the
channel. There must be a way to replace the mind. Stand up for
peonies, pink. The stems are cut and crystal bubbles and rush
filling goes under the faucet. Brunette fosters herself, again.
Vases of flowers cold and wet should be carried with two hands and
placed carefully down on a shifted white bookcase with a blue lake
view. Hot air comes to look through the crystal, water, and stems.
The air leaves embarrassed evidence of its hot-on-cold. Drops.
Someone brunette should sit down, damn it, and wonder how cold
vases surrounded by humidity can begin to draw rivers, oceans, and
lakes out of the sky.

44 —
Creative/Destructive
    Men move without ever
turning their heads to see if, maybe, someone they know is right
behind them. Whereas women just run. They know. They know for sure.
She is backed into a corner with a doe. Their four eyes rattle and
scan the darkened rooftops. She wears a pinafore and wields a
blazing torch; it is no use.
    Nothing of disproportion remains even
if you cut the fingers off elastic lace gloves to let red talons
cross the wrenched sky with cigarettes, even if you ignore the
tattooed sign of a thresher for sale. In God we trust. And there
are no pink flamingos staked into the lawns on the money. What do
we do to stop denying our destructive pram-sugar-cube culpability?
“We don’t need another loan,” to acknowledge that greatest creator
and greatest destroyer in a world of dreamscapes all filmed against
a Southern California backdrop. Instead of looking up with blame
and asking, “Why, God?” hold up a squealing piglet as if Lady
Liberty gripped it by the hind feet. Let the crowd of extras get
paid to clap to the beat whether they’re wearing bandanas, beards,
fishnets, dress boots, or purple suits.
    A planned demolition exists between a
woman in chains and a man in a red muscle shirt. She’s got her
suitcase all ready to go. He’s screaming in long johns. Grand. That
is their legacy. Or maybe stately is the best description for that
broken row of lakeside weeping willows ruined by a storm’s wretched
winds.
    For years they lined up and spilled
down from some humidity-laden sky. During a storm intermittent ones
were struck, killed, then chipped, chain-sawed and hauled off.
Wind, unknown here, is more real than anything made with dry ice
and a fog machine. We fight hardest for all that we are entitled to
but must be aware that we are fighting not only for the best that
we deserve but also, with the subversive nature of
self-destruction, the worst.
    Who cares about the bolo tie, the red
dye job, and the high school smiles? As Americans we must stop the
entitled acquisition of our deservings.
    Fuck. We may have to bow down, humbly,
and acknowledge, “Oh God.” Even with a hookah on a mushroom it
seems, “We need a good price.” It’s the same in the quarry, in the
brick barn, in the parking lot, with the mulch man, or cheered up
with a big brother’s bright birthday bouquet of Mylar
balloons.
    Just do it. Just say
good-bye.
    The woman with the suitcase drives
between the wilted lake and the blinking lined-up high-rises,
soothed by her someday after an electric sky, entranced by the
coming and