David Rivard

The American common is no collective or princedom but privacies of need & pleasure as they intersect in public spaces, tho the insufferable powers that be breed their plots behind our backs, thinking us witless, seemingly blind to their afflicted intentions, just a bunch of demographic motormouths & screw-ups to be targeted by commodities traders & search engines— a marketing niche for every need, stereotypes tagged by algorithms—here is a typical team of baton twirlers in an airport bar, each of them clad in foxy red track suits & tuned-in to the dollhouse stimulations of pigeon-talking sales reps;there is a previously undetected aggregation of retirees, evangelical camp kids, kickass bowlers, and mothy nuns in starched wimples, for whom the news of the day means the aging boy-man Hugh Grant's fear of double chins—neither of these or any other data dump entirely false, but so narrow-minded sometimes as to lose sight of us entirely: the midtown lady in Capris, a four-square surgeon off-duty & headed out to play poker, the plumber fly-fishing by the river— a sky of twilight slate now—not a word written on it.

to Simone Wandering off under those astrological signs charted just for you, my quiet trekker—all those houses & planets so perfectly straight-faced but still baffling at birth—don't think badly of me when I'm dead & you've gone deep into the distance of love tangles, moneyed interests, & old-fashioned commutes—into life in other words—I did what I could for you, knowing it might not be enough—I see now that I can't save you from suffering, & trying to hurts if I'm not kind. Tho I still want your life to be untroubled, & am afraid for you, a fear made out of my own fear of a future I can't control— the world so often a human heart that eats itself— places like New Orleans the Swat Valley Fukushima— the names of those remote destinations for film crews and symposium panels are places people die native to those regions & out to kill or defend life from itself—there is so much misery there that refuses to call itself misery & that sees itself instead as the unimpeachable power of a righteous day. And there are criminals & dunces elsewhere— hideous partyline whips, Saxon in outlook and proud of it—there are the bodysnatched and the inane candy-stripers & the greedy and the martini narcissists high on the rising year— but let's take the long view: these are not your true companions, & out of my reach your life will make itself in struggle & love perhaps dependent on the strength that will come if I only let go when you step out the door as hazel-eyed now as always & maybe more so this morning in slate-gray Gore-Tex.

Each could picture probably with great care his brother drawing the corded string of a watered silk bag and mumbling to Basho above the keepsake pay your respects to mother's white hair now your eyebrows look a little white too