1 New Poem

Zero Sum

There isn’t some treaty,
some mutual blood stain
to recriminate ourselves;
not but the ceaseless sort
of car stopping spark
that doesn’t fire by winter trenches
to dig again that grim ash heap
of digital readouts, that pointing
ice shade comes strictly
waltzing in two-by-two form,
passing me through as bug trap
glow.

There isn’t some line to draw,
between sweated-mouth cotton
and ground-down tooth puncture
wounds, from these barren bedsit
crooked floors to the cold
granite polish we take as things
given from past lives: as robber
barons, debt bonders, as
grain-cutting serfs and laundress tumblers
all.

There isn’t some swap in mindful
conscience to make these broken
years a wasted whole again, to
place in still water the rushing
reverie of these old stone
sentiments, this number-crunch
spiral of former rose petal
illusions: don’t last a
mid-morning’s knowing in this
climate.