ARREST
by RE DRUM cadre
Embarrassment
of riches
& yet we still
wrap ourselves
in cellophane.
To escape just
to be caught again.
Bad synesthesia
keeps us up.
Practice spitting bitch
in the dark.
They said:
“Put your hands up
for the bubbles.”
They said:
“Put your hands up
where I can see them.”
And the summer
was orange.
And the summer
was over.
·
Running always
a cramp,
body
question-
can I run/
should I run—
Rub the calf.
To the feet?
Already a light above.
Should I run:
“Should I run?!”
·
As if he lived
exclusively
in darkness,
surfaced
only at night.
As if some
nocturnal thing.
The sequence
hard events
to parse
beyond
the triggering kiss
we know comes first.
Next, the soldiers
rush from right—
iron-black arm
claws for throat
beneath
the traitor’s furrow—
conscience—
drive the ensemble
left, into
the Evangelist:
stumbling, scrambling,
beseeching blind—
upturned eyes ablaze,
his cape
a crimson halo
betokening
the martyr’s fate,
framing his only-open face.
Here, he abandons
his lord.
Behind it all,
the artist, absorbed,
holds a lamp
to see—to show—
obscure—seizure.
Flesh & metal—
the surfaces
he most illuminates
with brutal moonlight;
the taking of Christ.
·
Turn on the TV.
Turn off the TV.
Try to take
a walk before
the mayor takes
your walks from you.
Turn on the TV.
Turn off the TV.
Try to listen
to only the people
marching:
Their breath.
Their breath.
Their Breath.
·
Whether rich
with weathering
or shackled
with flight
soft pad
before dark
along goes
an observer.
It is on, this
along of them,
for retroactive
or foresight,
shaded and
graded, gray
boons skyward.
Belief intangible,
consequential,
a quotation,
and engraved.
BIO
RE DRUM cadre is a Seattle-based poetry collective with a partially rotating cast of contributors that makes work for both print & performance. For the “cadre” project, core members Alex Bleecker, Willie James, and Jeremy Springsteed were joined by Greg Bem and Justine Chan.
