Cx72 Poetry: Dave Morse
November 03, 2017

Gadolinium

You people, all stent and willowed
all pull yourself inside
to up a branch each time
and drop onto the scaly back
of the mystery. The 3 am watchmaker
stitching butterfly to his machines.
There are neighborhoods I avoid
because I’ve only ever been to their hospitals
but still must reach them
and return. The air crisp with blue
MRI white underground
and skylight, when they slide me out
to put the radiation in
glimpse gray occurrence
and back into the tubes
sheet and scrubbed, naked.
Later crosses paths with great
and darkened museums. Some fire
in my feet has been gone for almost
ever and more uptown never taken
to keep my heart sort of far berthed
in our collaborative dream
what my brain said with its radiation
doctors will write in their reports on me
about you, gentled whispery thoughts
crossed that parade like unreal carrots.

Doving

The source of Coal creek is a beautiful
and curious flooding spring, rising
from a level prairie at the village, 1847, inside
keeps the residents
human and non-alike, I can’t tell me Mama
what is a flooding spring? Rare
says crick in my mothers land
obsequious, unobsessed
may be what it sounds like

When Worlds Collide
but no, not today
at least not how the power men
put it. Enter the village
through the back gate
into this little shed of learning
light a case (my last, as I was a hard one)
Young America is sipping cobblers, roving around
in very loose and immoral coats, voting: 1852 now
and things are really gearing up to the weather.

When you listen closely it’s impossible to imagine
something slipping underneath even the bass
but yeah, Mingus it is
Always
All these shellacked little bits of gore quilt together

in the sky quite
heavenly on this dumb morning
a river of coal floods back
across the village and when in exile
the Artist Prince tells you
what an animal sounds like in grief
you believe it, as I do
still exists no better way to say

Car Talk

Did Daniel Defoe ever feel
this way to mull on
tritely tossing body
into the street.
Leap out bed or cross water
nocturnally shelling out
grown up terms
for your endearment. Dear
Abigail, my antenna busted.
Dear sunshine, dear rabbit.
Dear crooked wobble in the earth:
withdrawal symptoms
so similar to grief of
any sort, of busting up. I wish you
could have met him. Almost as
much as I would stop
throwing him around,
melt the butter in
to the potatoes, this torture
loudest and best sound you
may ever hear. Act nice to my face
screams the folk singer, but who
was this silent werewolf, strumming
ahead on her own enormous crafts? What
did she do to deserve justice?
Special occasions grow
little red wings over her eyes
such a small and perfect truth
could perjure myself on
this delicate motion that defines
style. It’s not about the exact terms
of the pact so much as the
way spit mixes itself
in the phrasing. Take care
to fall all over your boundaries,
whisper out the quitting when
the nerves flush. Place my hand
from your lids. Teach
me sleep.

*

Dave Morse is a writer, musician, and bookseller living in Brooklyn, NY. He is currently working on his second full-length book of poetry, forthcoming from Oakland's Lilypad Press.