JOSHUA WEINER

from "Riddle Book to the City"

1.

I am announced like thunder
from the hand of God, yet remain
impartial. Justice? Who cares.
I wait to feel my master's coaxing
finger, the fire wasp seeking
a hive of flesh. When I find my love
I burrow to daylight or the city's electric night.
Men have survived me, even children,
even fools! but not without strife
and some wonder at my can-do
to damage what I keep my eye on.
Lost, I fall to earth,
but even in my aimless slumber
I've been known to take a life.
How can you legislate my rest
when so many who would curse me
secretly wish me in their camp?
Friend or foe, can you name me
before I find my Jerusalem
in your body or a body that you love?




2.

Inside the neon cave: a mocking
festival of bodies endlessly combined,
false budding semblances to dim the mind
for you, who want them. And for you who don't:
this reminder of your brother's appetite.




3.

Pea-brained angelics of the city
we leave our markings randomly
on sidewalk, windshield, or bouffant.
Our music is the sound of fondness,
the low appreciative compliant patter
of those dependent on the scraps of others.
When you guess our name, you'll hear it pinched
as the pockets of your nesting
we hide ourselves in:
stout, short of leg, but capable
of taking off, at least, with something like grace.




4.

A world adorned with unworldly logic,
the city's ornaments are diverse and strange--
these uniform contraptions pulsing
through the arteries, a navy of corpuscles
pumped from the invisible muscle of need:
to already be there, to get away . . .

We travel without route, improvising
among the green to red to green
of late afternoon's clotting catastrophe.
Declaring our presence with a sea lion's temper
we seem blind to each other's dangers, speeding
along what doubles as a roof for those who live
beneath the solid stream of tar.

Even cheap poets have called out in the rain,
hoping (of course!) to be seen or heard
by one of us, bright ship
harboring in motion till it hears its name.
Poet or not, can you guess what
hums inside the city seeking you
late to the next somewhere
it's so important for you to be?

                        (bullet, porn shop, pigeon, taxi)




Nursery Rhyme

Once stood a field of wheat before the rain,
a field of secrets too, and fence knocked down.
Outside the house there is an inside room.

The window cracked for fear that it would change;
the window disappeared (and that was strange).
The window stayed the same and that was change.

Who ate the wheat and burned the fields to black?
The secret bird flew North and can't fly back.
The song inside an ear once filled an emptiness.

That was before the secret bird flew back.
How do we know the secret bird flew back?
The window stayed the same and that was change.

Rain, sleep, and rain is filling up the cup.
A fence of wheat stands still, and still won't stop.
Its breath inside your ear spills from an emptiness.

The opened window calls the children in;
the children fly to kiss their secret friend.
Outside the house there is an inside room.

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