from Immortal Whistleblower

THEY HAVE ARRIVED
four to the music of Andrew Swartz

1

either cars like inner tubes or
inner tubes that night
seemed to be driving
on an elevated river
freeway stripe,
they stepped off shining and dripping
deflated their craft and
wanted to stay for the meeting

2

the microscopic orbiter
he injected to fix his consciousness
with a little psycho-surgery
went bad, started strafing vehicles
on neural highways and
he had to poke into that blue vein
something even smaller
that will also have its own plan

3

leaves discovered in asteroid belt
frozen spinning and tinkling inside
an orderly procession around
a kind of maypole that was the sun
and still is


4

presliced sandwich meat laid and
the toddler toddled
out the fourth story window
didn’t die didn’t die
became kubrick’s fetus in space
the fireman didn’t have to
hose off the sidewalk
no bubbles popped

(our numbered planets and days
giant tangled knots
crazy eights of infinity)

travel achieved involving massive fuels
one agent assigned to an outpost in orbit
three years of trouble
shooting an obstacle course of satellites
monitoring the world’s
telephone and e-mails
the small spy lost it bigtime
realized all these aimless conversations
these thoughts were stacked like cards
and all the cards in the world stacked
would tower into space and
circle the earth seventeen times
and in fact did
so he programmed the NSA’s/NSC’s
(nth degree) broadcasting computer to
randomly shuffle out words
and it generated sonnets,
erroneous theories and recipes
for plaster of paris,
the words immortal whistleblower
forty thousand times

to Andy, corporeal master


you have so many shreds of dignity
I sit here now and robots
are being shot out of howitzers
constantly. I think of your apartment
as a wind tunnel
everyone so used to the tattered
chords they can’t hear anything
but you, making your way to the
fridge, leaning into the gale,
achieving a full tilt forward
as you reach behind the milk.
the other day snow
flew into my ear I know you
had a weary look on but so do
fresh walnuts.
remember the time your skis
hit those electromagnetic coils
we just looked at each other
with more ringing in our ears.

the world getting flatter, falling
beneath the static
our internal vale
that murmuring sound expressed
on an oxide
ionizing, spreading, never touching.

---

Purchase the chapbook | Back to Lavender Ink