compendium of universal human situations

james galvin

Two Horses and a Dog

Without external reference,
The world presents itself
In perfect clarity.

Wherewithal, arrested moments,
The throes of demystification,
Morality as nothing more
Than humility and honesty, a salty measure.

Then it was a cold snap,
Weather turned lethal so it was easier
To feel affinity
With lodgepole stands, rifted aspens,
And grim, tenacious sage.

History accelerates till it misses the turns.
Wars are shorter now
Just to fit into it.

One day you know you are no longer young
Because you’ve stopped loving your own desperation.
You change life to loneliness in your mind
And, you know, you need to change it back.

Statistics show that
One in every five
Women
Is essential to my survival.
My daughter asks how wide is lightning.
That depends, but I don’t know on what.
Probably the dimension of inner hugeness,
As in a speck of dirt.

It was an honor to suffer humiliation and refusal.
Shame was an honor.
It was an honor to freeze your ass horseback
In the year’s first blizzard,
Looking for strays that never materialized.

It was an honor to break apart against this,
An honor to fail at well-being
As the high peaks accepted the first snow -
A sigh of relief.
Time stands still
And we things go whizzing past it,
Queasy and lonely,
Wearing dogtags with scripture on them.

james galvin

Blue or Green

We don’t belong to each other.
We belong together.
Some poems
belong together to prove the intentionality of subatomic particles.

Some poems eat with scissors.
Some poems are like kissing a
porcupine.
God, by the way, is disappointed in some of your recent
choices.
Some poems swoop.
When she said my eyes were
definitely blue, I said, How can you see that in the dark?
How can
you not? she said, and that was like some poems.
Some poems are
blinded three times.
Some poems go like death before dishonor.

Some poems go like the time she brought cherries to the movies;
later a heedless picnic in her bed.
Never revered I crumbs so
highly.
Some poems have perfect posture, as if hanging by
filaments from the sky.
Those poems walk like dancers,
noiselessly.
All poems are love poems.
Some poems are better off
dead.
Right now I want something I don’t believe in.