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2/26/10

Lucas Farrell

BLUE. AS IN, “I’LL KILL YOU” (A PHYSIOGRAPHY)

Today: Sunny. Highs near 20 Degrees. Winds Northwest 5 to 10 mph.
The Weather Channel forecast for Weld, ME, January 23, 2010


1
a bird hiccups in flight

    its outstretched wing
slicing open the sky

bluespattering the depths
    of a moment


2
that’s how blue
the sky was
this morning


3
the sky over the lake
was elegantly
    fractured
like an elegantly
fractured
    ice tray


4
the moment doesn’t pass, it bulges,
then collapses, then is sliced open
by the wing of a bird


5
    spilling out
the guts of the sky


6
like a thousand
    shiny quarters


7
somewhere in the future,
    a frozen lake
        stretches its spine

and *boom*


    flashes
of former devotions
        bloom

like mayflies


8
so let’s make love
go like this
with its hands

so so s
o

as to eclipse
the projectorlight of the moon
which is blue
    which is entirely
    deciduously
blue


9
like a shadow puppet
unclasping bra straps
    (birds blasted
    out of the sky)

into unfamiliar frames
of reference
    upon
    reference




10
blue vomits
itself all over
        itself

after a night spent
under the weather


11
above a frozen lake,
a bird hiccups in flight,
its outstretched wing slicing open
the sky, via jagged compulsions,
absolving the blue
from the blue:

a thousand shiny quarters
        tumble down


12
like birdsong


13
a thousand shiny quarters housed in former-jukeboxes


14
(which, in turn, are housed in the smoky arcades
of our youth)

    perceived through the wild vaginas
of time


15
that’s how blue my sky was
for you


16
blue, as in, I’ll kill you


17
the blue being a phenomenal teller
of fibs

    told the ice-fishermen
the only cure
for the hiccups         if you’re a bird
is to swallow the sun ten times
real fast


18
told them: slide your
quarter into the slot
and hope that it
forces its brethren
off the precipice


19
        jackpot:
even
my blind spots
wore mascara

that’s how blue
how blue


20
I entreat you


21
to describe the meadow
as a “green incarnation of rain” (Ponge)


22
or to connote fog
by saying:

“the tree stepped out from the gray jelly” (Patchen)


23
to say, simply, “I love you
more than anyone could
ever do” (Spicer)


24
I want to undress
the parlance

to unclasp our handle on common grief

until
        fear is laid bare

is finally
        utterable


I want my love
to bear

    to smear you

with the magenta
of newly explicit
endearment


25
to believe:
“The sun comes loose
Like the bright orange thread
I used to bite off a new pair of dungarees” (Stanford)


26
or:
“I watched the clouds
Mosey over
Like blind men
Picking apples” (ibid)


27
the new moon rose vivid
in the wet dream
of my daughter (unborn)

    like the thumbprint
    of a serial
    god (born again)


28
or: the moon held its breath
through the tunnel
        of suspicion
    (filled its cheeks with
    the light at the end of
the image)


29
    the moon’s guilty
    of divining
    the wild vaginas
    of the moment (public)

lovespattering the depths
of a moment (etc)


30
“The moon is a white mouth eating the poor heads of trees” (Patchen)


31
the sun went *pop*
like those little
white packets
full of minerals
that ignite
when you huck em
at the handsomely
fearful


32
    (housed in the smoky arcades of our youth)


33
why do birds,
    when dying,
become something else
entirely

become nearly

        (perfectly)

    suggestive


34
the way this poem
becomes (perfectly)
        moonless


35
as in, come here
o come here

(that’s how blue
how blue     the sky was)


36
to fib:
    I scanned the price of skyguts
of lovesong
of elegiac
    birdsong
with my uniquely
    bar-coded
handle on grief

        on want

so as to make blue
go like this
with its
    mouth
        (for you)
with its
impossibly
    cavernous
god-mouth


37
I don’t know what
there isn’t
to say

    anymore


38
red splash of fish organs
in snow

that’s how blue
the sky was





January 23, 2010 (Weld, ME)

LUCAS FARRELL is the author of two chapbooks: The Blue-Collar Sun (Alice Blue Books, 2009), and Bird Any Damn Kind (Caketrain Press, forthcoming 2010). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Jubilat, Diagram, Cannibal, Forklift, Ohio and elsewhere. He co-edits the poetry journal Slope and lives and works on a goat farm in Vermont.

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