Mitch Highfill
POEM ENDING WITH A LINE OF COLERIDGE
I stopped looking at calendars a long time ago.
It is always today anyway, I call it landscape
painting with the world’s largest flashlight.
Call it the space between things and slip in
a key change bouncing across the floor
turning privilege into chore.
I like the word neurodivergent.
Too many holes in my pockets.
I went through my grail diary but couldn’t
find a living there either.
If I duck my head my shoes fall off.
For a long time I watched the news.
Now I don’t.
Now the beguine begins, Cole Porter
where are you? Cracked eyes
don’t see heart. Now I come home
empty handed. We are too surprised
to be hurt. Now you know that you
are part of a psy-op. The angelic vocals
you hear will never cease.
The dress rehearsal is over and just
when the curtain rises the stage
disappears. The play goes off script
from the start.
Settlers gotta settle. Where do horses
go when we die. How many times
must we be dug up and reburied
before we get an ossuary.
We are now in the find out phase
of our fucking around so I’m buckling
up. Is your tray in the upright position?
How many text messages can be stored
in a DNA molecule. Is this the sequel
to the sequel. String theory yearning
for the view of the so as if it was
so and not the canary checked out miles ago.
Listen to the song of RFK 2s’ brain
worm, how plaintive that song filtered
through a metal bucket full of gravel
being dragged through a trailer park
at sunrise… is.
Lebensraum.
For the people at home are
people who should know better.
I am one of those, but I feel no
solidarity with anybody else
in the bucket. The spring is fully
wound and the load falls quick.
The sky will be orange and
the film is split down the middle.
I saw a swasticar on Sixth Avenue
this morning. It was ugly and took
up way too much space.
Hammers fly across the arena.
Sometimes I see movements
on the periphery but when I
turn my head nothing.
A moral eclipse passes over.
A conical hat worn by Hugo Ball
in performance a century ago.
Categories have a way
of not wrapping around.
A wandering fugue state occurs
in my kitchen. The eye of the world
instead of the eyes of the world.
The center of all imaginable
orientation instead of stand
your ground. The weight of history
or the fullness of the moment.
The angel of that moment.
The synapse through which.
The static spark preceding touch.
All mirrors are two-way mirrors.
The blankety-blank of blank.
“Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.”
Mitch Highfill is the author of 5 (Lunar Chandelier Collective) and Liquid Affairs (United Artists). He has edited Red Weather and the Poetry Project Newsletter. His work has appeared in Readings in Contemporary Poetry (DIA), Heights of the Marvelous (St. Martin's) and Flarf: An Anthology of Flarf (Edge Books). He lives in Brooklyn and works in Midtown. Much can happen between the two.