poem || Jeff Harrison

Frau Welt

how the sea built us! -
don't lower that tightrope into this nowhere well,
it's for walking across -
welldiggers doing narrow like they're doing belief-appetites
whirl in doubt -

the peeling creeps -

want a phrase? here goes, Frau Welt:

we're now back, Grand Nothing, you Zero,
you weirdo cluster aiming Dead at golddiggers
we welldiggers strike back & spit gold,
spittle yr plumage now, and as trembles the Republic,
so trembles the rotted tho still-heavy black wind skittish thru yr hair

this will lock syllables onto yr locks,
Grand Nothing, Frau Welt,
snakes lying sluggish upon yr pate,
their squeeze will not wear this line thin,
nor thin as the Usher line will my blood run
at their hitherto pierced sleeps plugged now
with phrase sacked from margins

how the sea built us! -
you, Grand Nothing,
won't last a day against those eyeball tickets
I'm the dog who ate the prayer,
here mosquitoes disdain blood &
feast upon appearances
hummingbirds about yr well feed upon
carrion they often create,
bigger than dirt dinner

their tooth pains at yr question
"Shake for my will?"
stitch yr honor when it's too elastic, yep,
we're all longing to be yr dog neighbors, yip,
with our voices hanging loudly off thorns
wagging our haunches in the spot where
you left the sky to bleed out SOOOO white

I'm the sky you left to bleed white as
a sheet of paper waiting for dog drawings
most wearied white & hired to be yr traveling companion,
yr airline seatmate
essentially you sit small,
bubbling, & piqued -
that sound you hear is just
my tail dragging

sharper than a serpent's tooth
is my hound-tooth tearing the
sky open white as clouds
that blade you had packed for
remedies smells remarkably
(obviously!) like MIDNIGHT
yr mouth is the underside of
the back of yr head - deliquescent,
bucket slides off rope

Aaargh, blown is this ghost-blown eye
from person to person!
how the sea built us! -
moist mysterious as such spreads go,
so THIS is the Scorched Eye Jump!?
I've heard so much about it!
its purring smoke bears aloft
molten heels of Appearance-Beasts

to a prospective dog,
pictures are frolicsome only at intervals,
heels never cooled, &
it's ALWAYS back to the drawing-board for our likes
coins will prove our natures by that action: GENEROSITY
future time-outs, y'know, for spare excitement, guv'nor -

spare some change?
Ah - HA HA: SPARE SOME CHANGE?!
Mother Nature? Frau Welt?
one of 'em pauses from sundown,
or power,
to neither muliebrity perceived courtesy
watery the waves,
comical by conscience,
examine line of glimpses with mannered humps

the way the shelves in your back lay
everything will slide off eventually -
and THAT is why they call YOU Frau Welt...
it is your side-name when yr on the mend...
whenyou stand upright &
even when you lie on your side,
we these shelves in yr inside-out gyroscope