It’s Good to Be Dead in America
We can only describe and say,
human life is like that.
—Wittgenstein
After morning comes
the morning news.
Red candles wind hot wax
across the oak desks, empty
of newscasters, & into the wiring.
The emergency screen plugs the TV.
The voice instructs the audience
to slice three thin lines
in the pads of their thumbs
& rub the gunpowder in.
—
The toddler smears her hands in the white oil paint
& leaves prints along the scarlet walls.
In sunlight the wall & the windowpane are the same color.
Three servants walk into the shaded corner,
where the paint folds against the molding
like soft flesh, a little lip
for the toddler to run
her fingertips along, a plaint
for the organist to weep into his wounds
as the morning news dries into ache.
—
After the morning news
comes the convulsion of shadows,
every house gestating florescence.
Every house is built from the light bulbs down,
bare torture cell light bulbs
that drain the room of shadows.
What do we find
in the dry wells
when we pry those
old boards loose?
—
When I was young
I used to play this game
in which I’d stick my hands into the closet & pretend
that what I couldn’t see wasn’t there.
Sometimes when I brought
my hands back into the light
there’d be a little gift
in the palm.
A polished stone,
a single drop of milk.
—
The girl with the white scarf
slings the shot hare over her shoulder.
Snow dusts the muddy ruts.
In the amphitheater
the applause faints
into empty hulks
of tractor trailers.
Stuttering & hand-held,
the plastic straw
holds still in mid-air.
—
In Caravaggio’s The Calling of St. Matthew
Jesus has just walked into a bar
where some rough looking guys
sit at a table.
They look at him
as he points toward them.
It is unclear at whom
he is pointing.
It is unclear what happens
when the painter runs out of paint.
—
Christ’s finger pointing toward Matthew in the painting
is limp. In the sunlight his head disappears.
He makes himself
in shadows.
At the table sit five men, none surprised
to see Jesus. The powder stings in the wounds
& we teach all our dogs to walk on their hind legs
as we teach our shadows to hide in their holes.
Point a finger toward
the bowl of hot milk.
—
The prefixes taught
for history, a boat racing
across the tops of the flooded
trailer homes, the sharp sticks
we hide below
our pillows,
these are the only meaning left
to a painting’s perspective
as all the roots die below
the chapped lips of the moon.
—
At some point each one of us is the bearded man at the table,
unsure if Jesus is pointing at him.
At the same point we are the white-faced boy,
suddenly aware that he is in the wrong blackened box
of rotten books. That white paint
that gloves the toddler, now dried,
as she waits for someone to walk into the room
& notice that she’s changed it. As she waits for the night
to cut her hair short, you need to place a shiny dime
in the toddler’s palm because foxes travel light.
—
Who let these docile animals into my kingdom of starving pigs?
Who allowed the murders & thieves to sit at this table?
Who took the shadows to the canvas with a fingertip?
Who stole the body from its perfection?
What we learn in memories
congeals inside artifice. Sugar-coated breadstuffs.
The pale-faced boy should be afraid
to live on such a heavy canvas.
The savior weights
the right side of the frame.
—
Some people are made of burnt bones & soot.
Their shadows stain the walls when they pass.
The sources disagree whether Matthew was run through
with a sword, beheaded or stoned to death.
When the finger points at you
there will never be a single end for you.
Your body contorts in sweat-slick panics
as the hagiographers lick their feathers.
The sources disagree on the nature of perfect
form & ideal beauty. The rotten fruit of gaping lips.
—
There is no dignified way to die
but the raisins you left
on the unpainted picnic table
have returned to grapes.
A canvas weighs so much
& you have to move it every day.
When the morning news arrives
you’ll be scraping the wax
from the canvas & melting it
over a rabbit-bone fire.
—
The newscasters’ bodies
were dumped beside the amphitheater
where the sun shines all night long.
The spectators filing out of the speeches
saw the bodies & walked over them.
After sunlight yellows the drunken faces
at the drunken table,
after the night cracked the tables into ice,
after the agony of line & form
& after the agony of pigment & oil,
—
the crying & the prisons of ice
& the prisons of shadow
the prison of the canvas
& the prison of the eye
& the thunder over the frozen mountains
curled like the rotting sail on a lost ship
& the thunder through the shingles that shakes
the toddler in her sleep, there comes a frail figure
in the shadows. And for as long as the painting resists
its decay he will be pointing at one of us.
—
The toddler’s handprints on the scarlet walls
glow through the shadows.
The cameras keep rolling.
Small mammals nest in the empty desks. .
The children gnaw with their curious teeth
but have never been taught to spit.
The shadows flicker in the candlelight
like comic-book-villainous laughter & each child
looks up & asks me?
Is it me? Is it me?
—
From this common house, from these few coins
scattered across the wooden table, he will pull Matthew
to the moment of lying wounded but not yet dead.
The killer about to sink the final blow
& on his face is nothing more than boredom,
the way a stapler feels when it staples two pages together.
But you can barely see him, only the hand
outstretched. The salvation arises
from the shadows. The blocks of black paint
are not even shadow, soot & burnt bone.
Afterglow, afterlife, aftermorning, aftershadow,
after thievery & artifice, after experience & light
the morning burns
in desolation where the nickel plates
the desk tops.
Where the wiring waxes
like static on the jittery TV.
The grief, the grime of the fricative shadow,
the knife blades hidden below the oak table,
where the oils puddle.
—
One man has a jackal’s head
& teeth of sharpened pennies.
One man has a knife growing out of his back.
The preachers sneak up
& whisper their secrets
to the wound.
Every window is the same color as the sin—
a jaguar’s head on the body of a snake.
Undo the clasps that hold the gold chains still.
Rip the gold stars from the children’s’ foreheads.
—
One man milks an ax handle
in the basement to his mother’s house.
One man sees the interior space
as the rotting of shadows.
Pry those old boards loose
to find the television hidden beneath them.
Every painter wears a white lab coat.
Every painting has human parts in it.
We are denatured in
the paintings that fill the textbooks.
—
Lighting veins from the primal to the suburbs.
In museums paintings become postcards.
Dry wells appear between the government offices.
The thieves grow halos of yellow paint around their heads.
The hunter & the savior both share
the same skills. A bone saw & harp. A white hare stained red.
Muddy ruts through the snow preserve
the wind that rips the paper. Whatever you love of weapons
you love for weapons. The bridegroom
is coming to point at you & speak your name.
—
As the hypnotist points at the picture of Jesus
nailed to the fire engine the children
packed into the cafeteria
all scream Oooh-oooh! Me! Me!
Dead tractor trailers fill with bramble-bushes
just off the bike path. Every thing can be split in half
to produce two things. Every image
returns to the hole it gave birth to.
Take three steps into the light from the window
& the hand will rest on your shoulder.
—
The mother’s pearl necklace sits amid the splinters
of the broken kitchen table. The wind downed
all the trees in the veteran’s cemetery.
There is nerve gas in the schoolboy’s lunchbox.
There are thumbtacks on the seat
of every social studies teacher.
The easels in the art room have been painted over
with slogans from bygone presidential campaigns.
The children lie on the floor & rub
their swollen bellies with feather dusters.
—
Point a finger toward the bowl of hot milk.
Point a finger to the limp arms of the poppies.
Point a finger at the mass graves of artists after the takeover.
Point a finger toward the faces that form in minor shadows.
Some people are made of cadmium & lye.
Some people are made of burnt bones & soot.
The painters pose as models for the other painters’ scenes.
They light their sweaters on fire to warm their hands.
They talk to each other
in the dream of golden feathers.
—
When they cut your skin, pellets
fall from the broken box of wheat.
Both of them were killed
for the revolution
past. Both of them died
in a pit of plague victims.
St Matthew & Carravagio
sneak out for a mouthful of shadow
only to find that the shadows have
grown into their veins.
Mathias Svalina: Artist Statement