COMPOSITION FOR DISTANT SOUND

KEN L. WALKER

COMPOSITION FOR DISTANT SOUND

All the time talking atop the roof—serum
of plums turned over—how any warded space
centrifugal to urban pretends a
connective tissue of

group and isolation,
intuitive,
             rationale as hearing. Came up here to call
friends in Oakland
as much as possible, late

                                            Fernet desserts there.

A kind
of lonely
that intentionally moves a star in
previous positioning.

Anything else is additional.

Came up here

                         to form a ballet of air
                         with watering rosemary
                         and lavender leaves, as
                         does the breezes
                         of Rose, Selma, Venice,
                         Verma, cities of nothing
                         as palimpsests of floods.

These meanings make a map,
remain quiet, anticipate the construction

of a construction machine—where machine
enhances machine.

Planes lower into the region. Planes
rise out of the region. Planes plead sky
to open. Planes, too, feign isolation. Planes
need avoidance. Planes, uniquely surgical

              to the combination
              of grounded space and molecular moments

              as we understand it to be
              simultaneously melting / freezing.

Drowning out further thinking,
a little over a half mile away, through the summer
sycamores, eastern red buds, conquering whispers, combinatory sound
leaves residue throughout sleep patterns—occasional annoying echoes
harmonize with echoing occasion.

A midnight horn focuses above trees, below planes

All noise dissipates for a second and the clarity
of live instrument rises through all recording.

Park’s drum circle begins.

Through the layers, foundation. Through the foundation, splinters lay on lack of wings.

But are we not collective flight?

And, the sirens—how they drown
out layers of living, see blurs break reflection

from DELI at the corner.

This did not seem desperation; instead, glimmered, glimmered
until the competition
of the sirens dimmed automatically.

On the phone, California
says, “I feel desperate. Going to leave him,
his dissociation is on full tilt, you don’t
understand.”

See a sparrow, dream it hummingbird.

As in, hummingbird lugs
fourteen hundred pound adjustable composition. As in, why
would a rate risk anything? And how is it

that a measurement risks a tacit confrontation with
significance?

As in, I call, friend answers—frequencies
where decimals travel between modulations; where

I am both between and above
the postcards of park music.

Friend says, oh, what is it,
goes on,

             Und willst du nicht mein Bruder sein,
             So schlag’ ich Dir den Schädel ein—

in essence, to let it be or leave

          it alone—called
          so many times
          calendars scar grayed

Need to see California break its golden blood in person.

From the airport, send a message

            At the sky club, what
           do you think—

          chicken soup or Town Branch?

Read your reply with stature of heat
on wheel on ground:
On the rocks.

Ken L. Walker lives in Louisville, Kentucky after earning an MFA from Brooklyn College (CUNY). He is the author of Twenty Glasses of Water (Diez, 2014), Antworten (Greying Ghost, 2017), and has work in the anthologies Oil & Water (Typecast, 2010) and Devouring the Green (Jaded Ibis, 2015) as well as in Boston Review, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Brooklyn Rail, Seattle Review, Atlas Review, Lumberyard, and Tammy.