Poems from FUTURE LIBRARY
by Patrick Lawler
OUR BROKENNESSES
I visit my mother who has Alzheimer’s.
She says: “I can’t get over time. It’s Sunday, right?”
I nod, and she says, “Amazing.”
When I wake in the morning, I see this patina
of immortality all over everything.
As the day progresses, it is our job to rub it off.
And then there is the Book that refuses to be read–
that refuses to be written—a magician’s text of instructions
and diagrams for light.
This is where God hides.
When I look at my mother, time falls around her–
and I wonder about all our broken-hearted gods.
With a tissue my mother
wipes the air in front of her face.
A BOOK THAT EATS WORDS
We dwell in Utopia.
Unfortunately
it simmers at the edge
of a deadly dump.
It festers next to a celestial heap.
In these incantatory movements,
everything is on the verge of kindling
where the brain
is a biological wonder machine.
We dwell in a seething
where a beating book
eats every word.
I HOLD THE FISH WITH A PIECE OF CALLIGRAPHY HANGING FROM ITS LIP
I wear a scuba mask or a gas mask
we are the invasive species asking
is nature too expensive to maintain
sharpen our skills at mourning
an alphabet comes out of the womb out of the tree
being blazes bioprospecting the hidden minuscule
jewels of creation
genetically engineered trinkets and insects
all organisms are bags of other organisms the clocks consume themselves
see the blue room of the sky spilling into water I swallow footprints I swallow books
I sink into dwelling I hold the fish with a piece of calligraphy hanging from its lip—
terrible jewelry—a rainbow with a hook.
“WE ARE ALL LICHEN, NOW” (Scott Gilbert)
Deep in the earth this moving thing
is sometimes connected to our hearts.
(I wonder if our government officials have pet parrots.)
My mother believes there is another world inside this one.
(This is a book that is held in place with a nail of light.)
A subliminal text runs beneath everything—
connecting and separating.
(Did I tell you I was raised by my dead father?)
Time falls around us. Time falls into my mother’s hands.
THE BOOK OF SOLASTALGIA
I wish my mother’s mind were more alive.
I encourage everyone to steal books. Let us go down
to the bookstores and libraries now and steal
as many books as we can carry. Let the words out of them.
This is a Book of Time.
This is a Book of Fire.
A Book of the Broken—
of the Spoken.
This is a Book made of Puzzles—
a Book made of Bones.
This is the Ice Book.
The Cracked Book.
The Book that is nailed with Time.
This is the book whose words are nails.
At one level I need to keep talking
in order to keep from disappearing.
I have lived in a state of not quite being one person.
The ocean’s junkyards are singing.
In order to save my mother with Alzheimer’s
I need to take her back inside her life.
I speak to you as a small Hadron Collider—
one that will crouch in the center of your brain.
We need the Soul Plumber who enters the tangled webs
in this interconnected world.
The crossbreeding of time and place.
There is a tiny Hadron Collider inside this book,
inside this room, inside my mother’s head.
