SONNET (FOR DISSIDENCE).

We are full of anger and decency—the anger of a fragile cliff, and the decency of a broken lock, the circularity of its loneliness. Consider the percentage of news that arrives staticky,

over walkie talkies. A fact happened. I say “eek!” Jokingly! How the hell do you say “eek.” The eek shall inherit the earth? It’s raining on the freight tracks beside the smokestack,

top of which grows a flowering-forth, deciduous beauty, these flowering moments tend to mimic the rugged optimism that might abandon itself in the commercial forays of our

narrow-gauge politics. It’s raining on the freight tracks near Baltimore, outrageous stocky drops, the mineral concept of dollar coins. A departure bell swims around like (grayscale)

fingertips in (lenitive) wind. Later, the upward smudge of the moon playing above the ruckus of chairs arriving, or the upward smudge of the moon playing above the ruckus of

chairs packed off for another destination. What, therefore, cannot be enumerated? The wavelengths of distal objects? Here swerves the leaf-like trajectory of an idea, forgotten,  

the years-in-relevance of a lifespan or redemption-as-industry despite witnesses. A special prosecutor arrives, sweaty and bloated. He receives one (1) office in the basement

beside the Feudalist, one (1) stack of documents, differing in content from that of the Feudalist, and one (1) forehead-mounted flashlight, to enable the examination of fissures

and cleavages. In time, the Feudalist will steal the special prosecutor’s cigar-pinching device. All citizens shall be classified as “essential personnel”, and as such, issued signage

that reads “Break out of the cycle good” and “Break out of the cycle bad.” American deer, in particular, will offer stern topographies of the weather: doe as hotfoot pelt, buck

but for the branch bristling, the leaves bright with water, the shrink-wrap woods. Strip malls adjoin every hardscrabble America, especially districts that foretell a quilt-work of

calamity. The halo of a drive-thru! All these worlds natural, the heaped-up galaxies gleaming amid the despondent wisdom of coherence. (Too many cars rotate like cakes in

glassy buildings.) Man weighs his deficits on the greengrocer’s scale. I’m so stunned—wordplays flail me. I should aspire to be more than a kindly fellow occupying a space

at the denouement of a crisis, eternally sporting greaser attire with “you betcha” scorn. Let’s consider the pastels of soft-spoken resistance, many such kingdoms, borderless. . . .