THIS IS NOT WASHINGTON DC
Sean Farragher

“The poet is a liar who always
speaks the truth.” – Jean Cocteau

Grit dries on the skin.
We smell cities larger
than the universe where
we were welcomed as
aliens long ago. Nothing
works. Toilets foul. We
gasp silently, incubate
the lung; grow fast flowers
women and men with
dark petals as glacial dancers
insinuate their loins, clap,
catch the merry-go-round
ring, and there is not failure.

Grit embed in skin when
terrified angels step up
lead line motorcade, a
direct touch, some one
observes mouth and hands
for “tells” – secrets from poker
games, or the map of mountain
trace, -- finding the ages before
strung out in great signs.

Billboards to advertise,
also lies to uproot grit
falls in place, marches
in swart steps, joins
warfare held in lungs --
how silly immune T cells
at the Ball show too much
ass, cleavage or their package
tightly bound in silk splits
the boundary or bulges
as a planetary object out
of space and simple talk.

There is no grit to clean
when the Roman baths
opened for the masses --
but the city clouds again.

It dies slowly, but never
to the end place of large
exponents. Revived by
corporate love bites
angular teeth that
leave signature and
the monuments,
Lincoln, Jefferson --
oh holy night Dr. King’s
crematorium is empty.

Washington’s brickbats
can not imitate life or
the prospect of some
cool journey across
from the last Congress
where Alice twirled her hair
and Stieglitz photographed
the child with his lens cap on
kept her free from the grit
and diamonds. Lewis did not know
the score. Legal arguments
reversed, reached the third circuit
Appellate Count to half cheers.

This is not Washington DC.

But a replica of some other
domain that barely succeeds
as impression or pantomime.

We cannot walk in London.
New York was never born.
Yesterday, I ran to Amsterdam
gathered the demons and art,
but there was only pleasure --
not jealousy or disreputable
talk about the swan song
of the earth bound with terra
in a package mailed with death.

We are not the earth. We do
not tremble, -- Terra was
bound, as she found her
master set forward displaced
as grit falls as clean snow.
I mold this snow woman twice
Each version works but fails
The third, marvelous, rides
upon my knee in street cars
call "Desire" as Williams
lifted the lid of the garbage
and smelled the wasted fish
without vinegar or ketchup.

No blood or acid pools there.
We bleed opposites with
left over cadaver arms; free
of spleen, humors and blood,
they are alive, of course,
and in this "Brave New World"
death doesn’t matter.
No one else can live but
the fallen sails and smashed bones.


first draft 1/30/06