MATTHEW ZAPRUDER

Through My Binoculars

Down in the valley inside me

I can see the lake beside the summer

house at sunset turning golden

immutable as the brutal uncaring

eye of the grizzly I always

fear I am not destined to meet.

I would like to submit to something. 

Once I feared a certain woman

was slightly grey and not very feline

around the edges. Frying

garlic I heard the whisper

through the leaves submit, absent

mindedly brush your teeth

with the hemhorroidal cream

of domesticity. I grabbed my head

and took off through the figurative

birches, frantically building

a dojo. Now an animal circles

always my door. I am neither alone

nor at one with the dark, I am

like the dark inside me I pretend

I pretend to deny an object

inside the dark, closer than I

supposed. The blue heron

of pre-middle age goes crakking

through the unnamed period

of afternoon I once called question

relentlessly asked of twilight. Down

there in the summer house a man

loves intimacy, fears nature,

and believes in a peace he has

never remotely made with emptiness.

Despite my best efforts he insists

on hanging wooden chimes

beside the door.

Today I Feel

Today I feel someone has placed 

a flower the color of blood 

inside me, carefully fitting 

it below my surface ectoderm 

among the organs I need 

to survive. It secretes 

the knowledge some things 

are important but one 

does not need to know why. 

Just as the heart makes 

the sound of two violins 

sleeping in a baby carriage, 

this organ beeps like a filmstrip 

projected onto the side 

of a building, instructing us 

despite recent experience 

new technologies will help us 

be both more loyal and free. 

Also I am supposed to know 

it contains a microscopic 

tracking device. Just as 

the British were not so secretly 

relieved to hand over 

the sword, I cease half 

wandering and half rampaging 

through the sparse forests 

of my life in search of wayward 

free radical dreams. I want 

to be loyal, I say it once 

into the darkness. I call what 

happens next the future 

though others might not.

Narrative Lyric

Doctor DeSoto stepped into the fox's mouth.

Around him the fires were raging,

and he heard the wind.

The trees were imploding

in a raspy voice

while the rowboats

next to the summer pavilion glowed.

This sanitarium built

out of windows

has been such a pleasant

place to watch the night sky

change from. He remembers

drinking blue tea

and eating an apple every night

while the patients healed their lungs.

While they were sleeping

he could watch the faces

they had when they used to wander

their lonely garages

full of canoes that grew dusty

forgetting the lakes

of Nebraska

creep for an hour or so back into then out of

their current faces.

He thought “I will trust you,”

though whom was you?

He was growing incrementally taller,

the fox’s mouth was dry and filled

with a hot wind like

a chimney and he smiled

when he saw the young firefighter beckon

from behind his futilely

useful and innocent apparatus.