Free Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder Page B

and concerns
    swept up into galactic battles for peace
    in which the dark forces
    with their superior weapons and numbers
    were always defeated by a ragtag company
    led by slightly better versions of us. No one
    ever asked where we were going.
    It was all very clear without anyone
    saying the dunes and the sea
    would never hurt us. Every morning
    I opened my eyes so gently I hardly
    noticed the difference. Before I was even
    awake I would already be flying
    a Japanese kite, or sitting underneath
    my favorite tree, biting my nails. Perhaps
    I am still not supposed to say
    advanced translucent beings with the spirits
    of animals walked among us. Light
    brushed their human hair and cast
    their shadows across the tree trunks
    or our faces among our games. Someone
    was always strumming a guitar with a bird
    made of pearl inlaid at the edge of the sound hole
    and singing a tune about how helpful
    most people are, especially strangers.

You Have Astounding Cosmic News

    Dear sociologists, I have been asked to explain poetry to you. Thus
    in the offices of dazed lute press the clicking begins. Lately
    we’ve been conducting field experiments into our private thoughts. One
    faction next to the soul shaped watercooler wonders whether
    there’s any reason at all to remember the feeling of being a child. Is
    it best to imagine oneself again beneath the desk as the rusted
    air raid siren explodes with its bi-monthly ritual Wednesday afternoon
    fear distribution? Like you I was always holding particular crayons
    in the dimness of certain morning assemblies. I have been told
    some of you think the only constant is constant observation. I know
    city planners designed the city and still there are diffusionists who pace
    the deep blue edge of do you know you can never try to discover
    why why flowers in the cubicles. Between you and me the buildings
    also have a space for the sparrow named never who does not sing
    yes the cities die when you leave them, yes no one cares what you do.
    The glass covered in dust windows of the thrift store display
    a mirror from the 1920s. If you take it it will no longer regard young
    lovers with important thoughts pushed towards the mighty river. I
    will fall in love exactly about a million times and then I will die. Clouds
    playing dominos agree. At Everest on Grand someone eats yak discussing
    the endless undeclared war among the neutral provinces. Long
    metallic articulated girders cast thin shadows over thousands of windows.
    A photograph of a pacifist smiles. He wore a white suit, was a friend
    to the poor and worked for the union of unemployed telegraph workers
    who listen for signals pulsing as Joni Mitchell never said from the heart of
    a distant star. He was like my grandfather, after he died the city fathers
    did not know what they were building when they built a museum
    to encase a window in a wall brought from a far away country where
    it once overlooked the sea. Evenings through giant speakers people listen
    to troubled sounds whales bounce off continental shelves. Go tell
    everyone everything is related, the rich own the clouds, and you can
    always locate yourself with so many shadows to instruct you.

Poem for Tony

    Sometime around 11 p.m. the you I was thinking of
    left my head. I was in bed, among my white ten billion
    thread count cotton sheets. The pillowcases cradled
    my head like the earth a very young carrot.
    This very white moment of being alone without
    any loneliness I ruled and was ruled by like a benevolent
    dictator full of human feelings he manages each day
    to actualize for the benefit of his people. He feels
    very protective about their souls. To him they seem
    to be either tiny milagros in the form of boots
    or horses made of pounded flat silver, like the pieces
    in the homemade board game that glowed
    the way they did just a little when it was his turn
    as a child to choose which would represent him,
    or small blue aspersions cast like the outside
    part of an innocent