songs in the, songs of the, and fading choirs of..

WithIn the majority of  these
standard cases of happiness, one tends to
exclude the negative aspects,

focuses, instead, on those things that make the leaves
sing and dance, rather than,
for instance,
                        fall,

   
    and wither in piles
    alone
    and without the drunken kicks of cuffed jeans
    passing by.


  I say these things because the midwest cries for soul.
  For life and for the enduring chalk
  once used to write its neglected epic
  upon cornfields, and to fly uncaring
  upon the broken wings of crows.



  I say these things because the midwest cries for soul,
  because it weeps and because it
has wept,      because we just don't know any better.
                       
                                I dreamt of a place,

that exists only in the minds of hopeful youths,
that exists, that

a place
with leaves that have never,
will never-
turn rust colored in the inevitable coming of cold-
  with paint peeling off of cars with paint
  peeling off of cars, with snow piling on top of sagging rooftops
with,


spring fades to winter
fades to



Leaves fall and who can stop
this falling

of snow of ice
of
                    tired thoughts
                    composing themselves
                    to the twitter
                    of washing machines
                    of wavering candelight
                    to the clash of swords
                    to the unbreakable gaze of portraits
                                                            of statues
of rain, of

songs written in the absence of
real heart, written in the columns once
                  arranged by the sky
re-furnished by greater, whiter
beards, by

          insomniacs
          by geniuses
          by the masses
          arranged in formation
          along the banks of rivers
          in circles
          at the powdered roots of looming mountiains
          in the knotted roots
          of trees, in the
          of the,



in the contours of geometric oddities
to the tune of
the outlines of
                                skyscrapers
                    of orphanages
                  of pillars of light of
      varying shades of grey,
    in the space
    in the time, and the holy maw of


                      rythmn, of time,
                      to the motions of planets
            in the great dark of night
            in the great emptyness
            of space, of


             
            this is the realm of mist
                                        of dreams
  of lamps and crooked teeth.
  Of the holy sub-Division of America,
        the sanctified ground of shopping malls
      and the religiosity of
the quiet of
                      the movie theatre.
                We are the shimmering                     
            silouettes of time and space entities
                                forming themselves
                      of will and destiny, of
                      lost books and daytime television, of

            this is the realm of
            the home of
            the time of, the roar of-
                            this is the realm of the cosmic yawn,
of the celestial joke, of

        this is the realm of, the place for,
                  the time in which the

        this is the

      palace of smoke;
                          of partially obscured mirrors
                                                    and secrets.