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.
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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?!”
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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.
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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.
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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 DRUMcadre 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.
