An Incident Assembled
from the Journal of the Perpetrator
by Rich Ives
I’m on my way to rebellion and I’m there to learn
bandaged in cargo to smudge my intentions
drinking spinal pleasures I span the hour
waiting for paperbacks with several hours inside
clouds in the pond’s ceiling pale palaver of washed light and still
overwrought pigs slap the mud lever the fence to a bend that releases
ungainly flung their dangling trotters up and over
which I greet with my orchard and tiny golden claws
at the silence in the sentimentality chuckling down the light like a room
with branches its body slicks the principles of organization
held by the principles in the organization and sometimes I fever
my love letters with a pinch of obsession
blossom in my election which can’t process the night transparently
though the idea dresses and in this way goes out to them
down blind alleys of innocent resolve and by placing a tender of rest
empty in 3 A.M. in the way of a dancing
I was high school dusty and evasive only one trouble
but big and I’d been already named that
in the season of the rebels which captured their anger
like a misplaced empire of ants
the pulse of what was breathing in my wings
one glass lawn and some teabags withdrawn
from the moans a solar behavior occasioned by the dew
frozen in last winter’s lips kissing a statue
I questioned the nervous creature who lived there my
words like fish and tender collections
it was a camp for that wonder with premises vacated yes
anything had happened and happened
and slept there where I constructed aftertaste
beforehand and four of me seemed to know
three of me better than I did
I had an olive in my pocket where my lack of money used to be
in two bright canals winging north across the possibility of approach
it’s a dark weightless night floating out from might have been
two bright lunar reflections clumsier than college
I locked my cylinders into my hand
and I hit on barreling ahead of myself where I had been so often before
reflecting upon the moon’s involvement with one sliver of possible
away and one lecture refusing conclusions
the pleasures blemished onto the crutch and sway
actually choosing my foot from the stable
the patient impossible held the impossible patient
while I became my cold self as one
which had entirely too much
body and was out of humor needed to get some air
the two factions of any lover confuse the uniform
uniforms and old weapons no one has seen before
if I splay my little finger singing in the mirror
I mean left or right and which way do I
turn to get back to slant and fold
the great lift and applause of bone breaking over
the second joint stunning the jaw into silence
and a crackle of splintered attention I’ve been
wearing this decision of interest since Tuesday
quite funny how I drive my distraction
into the wrong lake and
still carry the picnic off with memories of worry-rice
frozen in mother’s father a trail leading maybe
into a tenderness that knew where the old cliffs wanted feeding
rain spread out over weeks and days
calling thousands of the tiny wet staircases
the still whispered into the hyacinths and
the bleeding hearts there was no abundance
not in the stone and without proof of low wall content
without a few rungs of interference many daytime
scaffolds would be left hangings to offset the climbing
choruses of resentment held in the cups of flowery pergolas
but you stretch the harbor to what you can almost see
inspect yourself proof of territorial regard
don’t consider me or anyone else with restraint and don’t walk
in the naming of things lilt but don’t not walk to things
as I said to the radical brick I’ve already thrown me