Private Furniture Symphony

“Things are already complicated.” The light is never quite bright enough. You can’t make out anything that’s transparent. You search for vivid patterns in the dimness. A gust of sand and wind, spread out the red cloth as a thick forgiveness. On clear days watch the crash of something falling overhead. The distant sound of a child’s crying mingles with the television broadcast. The white walls step into silence. Streaks of dirt grow slowly distinct on the windows after the storm. (There’s a metallic clang of iron against iron, awaiting its echo.) The camera on the table disappeared in the riot. In fact, it was stolen. So you shut the windows and install a security chain on the door. You draw the blinds to make the windows less transparent. How about putting in a spotlight to make the place brighter and light up anything you might want to light up. To light up the echo (in case it comes) and give it a pale silhouette. Light up the broken
As you sit here writing the shivering. Breathing between the repetitions of the air conditioner and the news. The phone can’t reach far enough to fill up the blankness of the camera. The television is tired of how long- distance calls freeze, so it’s acted up and started playing the next satellite channel. The fax machine breaks through the garbage can’s defenses. Camp out on the square to watch the sun rise and set. The only thing the garbage can is missing is garbage
One image after another. The same colors go up and down the pole. Like nothing happened. The tourists’ cameras flash on the square. The last tragic hero reaches out to take the frame draped with heavy black cloth, under orders to scrub the indelible ink stains clean.

1989

flats, no people

Whenever I visit a city
I think about buying a flat
whenever I get to a new place
I think about settling down
I’m looking for what I imagine
the thinkable cannot be done
the doable can’t be attained
an impossible person

The refugees’ children are far-flung
their line stretches on without end
settling someplace won’t give you long life
the short-lived look harder for home
the boundlessness of home
of homelessness

The more you’ve an itch to escape it,
the island, the more it’s your here
and yes, the whole world once was here too:
it’s precisely that sort of once
or maybe a sort of believing
believing this was once the world
when really it was floating midair
which makes it unthinkable now
to settle down here, to escape
or to return

A city you cannot return to
a city that used to bedazzle
a city no one recognizes
they say that the dazzle portends loss
history once used to portend but
the prophecies no one recalls now
expectations no one recognizes
when no one remains
when no one can buy
when no flats remain
when nobody buys
when people not flats lose
impossible having
impossible flat

Too many people
leaves no way to live
what’s left is no thing
that makes us no body
if not a body
then just a no