Black Math Blues
It is August lastlight, that broken
deck used now for coasters
& bookmarks. A stay in the course
of days. A jack of spades as
signpost, directions despite the
mathematical certainty.
The closest of Jupiter’s moons spills
magma gained solely through gravity
& compression.
As if spandex were enough.
The man on stage splitting the 32-20 blues like
an ingrown hair knows the truth of it,
& wears it like scar tissue, calloused
like volcanic ash.
_________________________________
2.
The executioner left the gallows when he found
Staggolee’s neck unbroken despite
the hanging. Mars is a dead planet though
its valleys belie a narrative
as yet untold. Patton
was killed in a jeep driving 10 miles an hour.
Isolated instances,
perhaps, but the certainty
of history. The collection of facts nothing
more than the building of a case
already won.
Economists claim that abortion
reduces crime thus the church demands
humanity at the expense
of humanity. All the better to sing hymns
for an eternity in his name, unless
you get that name
wrong. There can be
no mistaking
certainty.
_____________________________________
3.
Marx claimed All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, as if
capitalism were merely matter like
the rest of us. He foresaw and underestimated
the efficiency in our ability to compromise
one another, a flaw in his humanity. The blues
does not make the same mistake.
You lock a man out of his house,
he breaks down the door. You stop loving a man, he tries
your sister. An atmosphere is like skin, thus pierced
altogether pelted with rock enough to scar
the surface. The defining nature inside us &
the universe the card unturned
& full of gamble.
_____________________________________
4.
Summer has broken & with it
a burning sphere
backlit now upon the green felt
of the stars & their whirling suites of
worth. Fall has set his foot in
the doorstop and denies closure,
the expected intruder still
yet to deal.
My son scored a goal yesterday
the ball curling inside the far post
like mathematics expects
while my dog barks into the darkness
at what she doesn’t know.
-BT
