Steve Mueske ​

Suddenly

There is a better way of leaping than Just Because.
We all know the water's not always black
at the bottom.
Sometimes you just need a good xylophone.
A bowl of coffee. An afternoon alone

with the tulips & Lawrence Welk mashups.
The tightrope strung rooftop
to rooftop lets you see the birds
swimming below.
They are another form of language or

a song without staves.
In the wind that is the world flung in circles
round the sun, the clouds are water's desire to fly.
All is movement. All, song. Every last thing
a test of light's power

to turn a flower's head.
The way a wildebeest's does
when a cheetah, having patiently
calculated distance & speed, suddenly
blurs.

---

We've Come too Far to Turn Back Now

We’ve come too far to turn back now.
Ghosts lean out car windows, waving plastic flags,
Grinning with mouthfuls of black candy.

The living throw rocks at the living
Because they are not dead.

The sky trails a shadow that wavers over houses
In the shape of a large bird.
The bombs come like the heavy strokes of a piano.

There is a boy standing before an altar of rubble
Screaming the name of his sister.

A father wonders if there are floating spirits
In the dreams of machines; if there are,
Why won’t his prayers reach them?

If only he could send the hot breath of God west
To devour the gold trees, the gold fields

Planted one after the other in ordered squares
Of plenty, of overflowing grace. But he is just a man
Covered in dust, a man

Among many, fire stinging like an angry wasp
His shaking body.

--
Steve Mueske is an electronic musician and the author of a chapbook and two books of poetry. His poems have appeared recently in The Iowa Review, Typo Magazine, Water~Stone Review, Thrush, The American Poetry Journal, Verdad, Redactions, and elsewhere. He is currently collaborating with photographer Kevin Solie on a series of poetry and image conversations.