Lyall Bush

You Have Gone There

Over in my neighborhood anyone can light the candle.
Right now it looks like it's mine, jumping
Like movies, the train ride from the country
To the city for the first job with him, the guy
Who strides restlessly through his rooms, each time
Pouring over a sheaf of paper as if searching for something
To say. When he does, she is ready to want him. 

No joke. The messages are of the moon
Over on the sign. It is formulating the soundtrack
We have worked on and which is
Best, fitted for your bones. 

Third

There are two stories, and I'm one
Of them. Over the hills, on the path
Is the country, if you wanted to know. 
Forks rattle through the salad. 
Before we left the strawberry sellers smiled
Queerly, and say they were afraid
But they were never friendly after lunch.
They couldn't be now, 
Because spaceships were arriving.

The lemons they had for eyes
Resembled the snacks on the agenda, 
And the audience may now return to the washrooms
After a few movies have passed.
Cats and the ghosts of cats wander in,
Nameless, as if nature, anything, really
Were their friend,
But is really more of a bum buddy. 

I despair about the visit. 
Whose face will I arrive with this time?
Snippets of them are more than enough.
Last time I rolled on the carpet with their dogs, 
Except for the years 2003 to 2005
When the animals were gone.  

Almost everything can be compared to an abduction.  
When are you ever in the chair, seriously?
Are you protecting me or you?
I am changing it, I am making it super real
So that when I come home again
It will be in a different state.
Me three.

Balloons

Once you have gotten another helping
And left your ticket with the man, you go upstairs
Into the main dining hall. The heat is on, 
And people are stuffing their faces.
And now I can see her again, in a borrowed outfit
The color of pumpkin. Light tells us everything.

She is comfortable. But when
A couple of counties away you smell pot
It makes sense: two old hippies are picking cliches
Out of their teeth and laughing for five more minutes.
A couple pulls up in elegant lines, the design
Of Manhattan decades ago. Their engine purrs
Like mental activity, and suddenly it’s then,
Men are thinking (and speaking) in dense riddles,
One-liners, measuring out their acknowledgements.

You pass me in the hallway. Do I respond? 
Once we had that thing, like a magazine subscription
Except with ice cubes and, later, we ate grapes
Out of a bowl I was balancing on my chest.
You were embarrassed and nearly drank too much.
I smoked some more and slept soundly.
The room cold as a church. The same florist
Sent me the same message on its sign tonight.
They had run out of letters and “Balloon”
Looked like “Bacon: (“Get a free bacon”). 
No wonder I felt like falling in love.

Just Me

The agorophobes have it. Stimulating conversation aside,
Twenty of them are here playing cards
Seeing who is more deuced, he or the singer.
While the fans run wild, true wind comes in earnest.
Boys run the videos through and around the meat of the moment
Just as Karen departs early as though planned.

Someone wonders where the brave are.
Where is the Virginie line? Everyone here is so old,
And I am getting there. Now the coffee is served in tea cups,
Who can live this way?
I am home, paying my taxes. It’s late,
After lunch, the juices are flowing,
I just didn’t know they were flowing out.
From there they went asunder, foul mire.

Dingle said to Jasper, “the Rhesus has gone to pieces.”
Then Jasper to Grimpen, “Today is religion day.”
And thence to the carriage with the toboggan.
Roy Rogers was my countryman
And I come from Oklahomie before the tragic end.

Six Word Novels

Humanity feel their sorrow is you.
Opportunity knocked again, during the sauté.
The robots invaded, then thought again.
Windows opened; pencil lead rained in.
Hank lamented swearing off the drugs.
Rainsoaked was his look, turning 40.

Seeds of time, planted too early.
Bowie concert, ’72, still seeking her.
Episodes of flight were each dreamed.
Police hunt: the thumb, severed uncharacteristically.
Library inventory, he hovering until late.
The rage of Peleus? News to them.
“You have utterly destroyed it. Utterly.”
Spend your mind, hide your head.
(Spent his mind, hid his head.)
Family plans: her legs well spread.

Sinatra was his idol; and yet.
The singer cultivated his black psyche.
Please help with this perfect crime.
Yes, the summons has arrived, I said.
The chant began: a paean to night.
After that, canned salmon tasted good.

Arthur de-trained, carefully checking his pockets.
Borrowing money, they found new ruin.
Will tomorrow contain all her tears?
Her psyche: Godzilla pulling electrical cords.
The self-erasing crime was finally complete.
Old music really spoke to him.

In my town, junk piles ruled.
The world below opened to us.  
The sheet music held the codes.
The sky is a lyric singer.
Grit blew, finding their hiding place.
Took my heart back from Jesus.
Mother called my name in prayer.
Larry’s Bait, seen from the train.
After the divorce, his practice deepens.
On the roof, three new lives.

Practice asymmetry; all will be good.
He saw destiny was a window.
Hard not to see the destruction.
Fax Melinda to regard yon moon.
Fetishists gathered, beforehand, at her place.
Plaintive surf, we are not over.

Seminar: try not to eat people.
All true, he reflected with wonder.
April showers; she packs her things.
Little ways, old paths, all gone.
Abstracted emotions, how could she feel?
Intense, westerly, forward; then he woke.
Set sail, lads, be ever lost.
Excel, ancient parabolas, suffering through it.
Battle smoke; the king utterly unhorsed.
King Bee sings: mistreated me, baby.
Hair coiffed, she ran the light.

Sky Flies in Late

I'll tell you once I finish the laundry.
I like mine fluffy, the opposite of the story
Which involves two stragglers who arrive
Looking for the president. Just like that,
Dusty, and they need to meet to discuss the files.

Borders are so maddening, in part because the sky flies in
Late to tell us which images weren't received.
Morbid curiosity tells me that her eyes went thataway,
After her sulky grin, her boyish grin.
Her drunken, pansexual leer. Twice today, it passed,
The feeling of people having sailed by noon,
Their outer coats floating like a priest’s garments,
The way the Mediterranean sun goes down.

I found hm studying motivational automotive magazines
That read like a certain kind of self-conscious movie
From 1965 with pockets of tree-filled silences
Or what is not silence when the wind picks up and moves
The serrations and the sussurahs.

Just drop me off at the library, where the librarian
Gives me the usual tight smile and, today,
A reading list that is querulous and unfocused.
She says, raising her scanning wand.