Canon #2

Downhill,
a view,
and who will be healed?
I should say,
this heartland,
handfuls of tragical speeches,
allowed
this Kentucky wild
crashing aloud.
Passive onlookers?
Like an impressionist background
they have no future or past,
and,
hell,
no present.
Faith healers, and
cynicism as an opiate,
watching the boat races in our
Sunday best:
make me not care.

Pyramids

Twenty lines
inorganic and un-architectured,
like so much of human civilization
never occurred,
never came to pass.
Like American views on
forms: music, art,
philosophical discourse,
pre-ninteen-seventy:
abstract, not in a
centrally
planned-fashion, or artificial,
but rather,
not there,
like a ghost of a
Modern Man.
A recurring theme,
and a waking dream:
we're leaving this behind.

Canon

Canvassed
the inner-harbor
and nautical terms
like an inside joke,
sailors and their industry:
this is no place to grow up.
Maltese anachronism,
exotic as North Carolina
and the incessant swearing
to remind you
we're not kids anymore,
everything else aside.
The ships are the same
the faces might as well be
and the Broad Street bars,
cars and tourists,
it's all geography, socially
constructed.