Salvatore Difalco

Ruby

Poised with poisoned

or poisonous thereof

a little heat in the palm

to secure the shawl

a blanket unsafe for

unwanted as if or

retained in the name

of that other crawling.

Come on, make it

all is not what you

want it to become

for instance how

surround yourself

in a manner befitting

in a manner allowed

in a manner mattering.

Easy one two one

two one two one two.

Microphone tap.

Handgrip salient

as such thumb

black bruises all

sifting an itch

called Ruby Ruby.

Ruby Ruby

thrown from a dove

a feather falling

as if those heavy

thighs Ruby Ruby.

As if those heavenly

thighs Ruby Ruby.

DRC-5593

Lachrymatory agents

why I am bloodshot

and the leakage

me as the right not

knowing the left.

This is what we

assume when caught

up in the buzzy feed.

Crack head soup

meaning batons.

Never mind bi-

carbonate of soda

or other inventions.

We’re on an endless

loop it seems.

Or it could be

should it not be

a panpsychism

trope not fitting

in the scheme.

Later, look over

schemata and

pray Kevlar holdings

report earnings

above projections.

Crise De Foie Frit

Doubtless this could not be could not be

but that she turns and turns the bodies

strange and sublimated to bottled spirits.

Conversant with fire discussing burning

as a kind of soul food, and to penetrate.

Abstract less form from the formal

gross manners of the quintessence

of things to their proper celestial rail.

Or bear them light as in the fire inside

that universal claim to be interior.

Doubtless this could not be could not be

but repeating doesn’t fill the ache

or straighten out the frame of the

paint-by-numbers pony on the wall,

praise the Lord, alleluia, alleluia.

We exist always above seasonal

and nothing forestalls further mention

of that gap between story and wound.

The slashed chest sucks air from

the world of our conversational tone.

Make it better, please, one asks men

and women with no faces, please

let them do their work without political

interference. You know how those

people like their liver? With onions.

Noncommittal

Open-mouthed man among trees

colors red and yellow you know

a scene best left to cigarettes.

A face like bread sliced on a board

the electric knife comfort-gripped

and you tight-lipped, noncommittal.

Floats above canopy like a hawk

it is a hawk red-tailed something

exceptional as a breakfast moon.

They said a sadness wears thin

when slugs underfoot yield steam.

We wear it to our graves, they say.

Nothing much to do besides chat

and spread blankets for the dogs

heavy and uneasy as the past.

Or the future, give it time, let it

breathe like a dusty green bottle

of vagrant vintage and then try it.

We let him go before anything

came of the hither and thither

or whatever it is that it triggers.

Not enough to contain in

a glass for it evaporates

quickly and leaves a slightly,

ah, astringent aftertaste.

Patterning

A pattern needs to be maintained or found if not existent.

A pain in the neck causes the reaper to lift head and twist.

Lift head and twist left and right and repeat severally.

It comes down to blinding faith and belief in plenitude.

If you believe fish will fill the bowl, make a pact with friends.

Convince them your travels will comb the seven seas

and only grown ups will wish to hear the following stories.

Everyone agrees it’s like practice for the end times.

Nothing could persuade this poem not to be itself.

Yes it digresses into gibber, but listen to the world.

Lift your ear to the sky and quiet your mind if possible.

Words appear on screen as if by magic, so many, so many.

Why talk of fractals when they mean nothing in context

unless they do and it is all some kind of mental game

to keep people with eyes trained to the page engaged

for longer than a few microseconds. We know the truth.

Okay, make it plain, a message in a bottle comes to shore.

What does the message say? It is written in a language

we cannot understand and also seawater has faded it.

Only then can we pretend that we knew all along.

We’re trying new things all the time, in an effort not

to die of boredom. But the mind gets soft when it runs

on fucking autopilot for indeterminate lengths of time.

Then words appear on screen as if by magic, so many.

Sal Difalco writes from Toronto, Canada.