Anastasios Kozaitis (bio)
from Doubting Sonnets
II
The tinted linings
of negative strips
The sleep projects can fire about the lost
To the tenth degree. Carry me to Galilee
And cut down that tree. Plane off burly tips
For straightening that comes easily only to those
Devoted to the line, to the angles, to Euclid’s
Farthest points exploding in a dark matter requiring
A simple proof to pave the way. A water’s ore
Falling heavily. Too discrete to watch disperse
Like a lost Israelite on a clear Sea of Chaldea.
Fire up the oranges. In peace we kill. Drop the bough.
Send epistles, and line up the troughs. The palette
Of hunger breeds more gloomy lines. Tick tock
About the thumb. There’s so much crying from
Where that came from. In the bricks in the mortar
Our bodies turn to water. Into the celluloid air
The forgetting resides. Within a body for survival
And survivors try to conjure up the holes
That have burned away. The sun rises soon
And the feet will drop down one way or another.
IV
What Country Is This?
The color blue, a Utah sky, paints off the top
from where we sit and see the valley as it drops
down past the heights of buildings built to rise
above the Uranus manifest. The white buildings
rise in an honor. Relinquish a facade of earnest
mimetic effort as a triumph of some engineering feat.
To be human is to believe it something greater or
lesser than. Anthropomorphosis. Kafka’s got nothing
on us. Step right up to the microphone. Tell the world
your story. We all we want to hear it. Enunciate.
At least that’s what you want to believe. Shot through
a heaven, the orange blast of artillery in honor
of another God that you believe is lesser than.
V
Don’t sleep
so hard on the gods
With your old conscience on wheels.
Scoot over the ill believed corpse
And prostrate to the maldiagnosed.
Miasmatic supplication forward to the zeal.
There are two teams from which to choose.
Malebolge’s bell towers ring nothing with
Their missing clappers. The hollow tinnitus
And solar plasma fields inch towards a space
Near you. A parade route’s planned.
Authorities think of everything. They’ve got
The Jersey barriers placed for the highest
Level of protection. We’ve built ourselves
A New Jerusalem just inside our crania.
There’s no place like home.
