Green Lights/Purity
of Vision
Kyle Muntz
Black
The world was destroyed.
Never handing down, I swam along tall paths beside great columns reaching nearly to the moon the glimpse the
standing walk of heaving creatures whose breath like countries the way they
moved they walked, across distance destroying every step destroying roofs casting houses into the air, beneath the water, into the
air,
they walked—to be stranded on a piece of driftwood, the drift where I held them couldn’t be helped, a crow settled
on my forehead and stayed for a while, even if I never said hello.
Hello. What are you doing in this country?
(CAW
)
Hello, what are you doing in this country?
(CAW CAW)
Hello—what are you doing in this country?
..
.
(Stabbing the earth, and chewing worms.)
Eventually it flew away, it didn’t feel like talking to me I didn’t want it to; wearing my face to a party where everyone was naked, naked wearing masks that showed only their faces
impossible to laugh because you couldn’t tell if they were really
laughing, so difficult I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t help I couldn’t help myself I couldn’t help myself I couldn’t help myself I couldn’t help myself
I couldn’t help myself
I couldn’t help
myself I couldn’t help
myself
at all.
I didn’t have to look very hard but eventually I found a statue standing up against the rain all black faces in the dark standing against WAVES dark waves of plaster and vermillion crashing against buildings burying more people than history
trying to drown my car my roof my memories everything I had ever considered tacking to the walls the walls themselves the school the
mailbox every television
a dead soldier held his swords in front of himself, a future from which his own future could be
born.
I remember I was talking I was talking
I was talking
about the water I was talking I was talking I was talking
about
the water
when it came and tried to bury the walls to face the moon she glowed I sank with her beneath looking out through eyes that never
saw
truer fathom of hideous words looking up I saw a
GOLEM
searching the air and water he raved between buildings beneath them (not to find) over planks in worship of waving seas the passage no ship
had ever
sailed.
Leaning back to look at the sky, beyond vapid clouds still swirling of dark machines flooding dark matter their words their waters
the past in vogue is the present memory returned to distant thoughts of
words renounced
by people by people by people by people
by living people in their houses looking out through eyes still blinking never looking back only space in swirling and other planets without solar winds
sweeping space
nearly so bright as all the sails we remember when living
with grandparents in the countryside who spend all day rocking in chairs
to punctuate, to punctuate, thinking ever of impossible situations forgotten,
our own memories renounced, in the zone before memory
never any position,
just breezing past
like winds, like memory, following dots across the
face of blank pages
renounced
at the foot
of the statue.
The day had yet to come.
I was drifting on my own, not sure how I’d gotten there. Trees stirred around me half out of the water but no clearing, no clearing anywhere, only blue rays like spikes within a prism, a prism of spikes, a glowing concave prism
altogether of
spikes,
rising, some hideous structure, like a glowing mouth, smiling, it smiled some hideous smile I didn’t know what to do with it, drifting at a languid
pace beneath the rafters, in blue light,
a neon beam coming directly down, falling on me, making me glow, making my body
transparent to see the framework of light inside me,
my glowing face
so bright you could even see
it
beneath the water.
I fell
underneath
the water where gleaming shone: there was a shipwreck, there was a meteor, there was parliament, a little sister a gagging baby, three dogs, hundreds of fish swimming fish lights rainbow lights across glowing
of almost of time nearly wandered further when across the waters a memory
skipped, taking nearly that lifetime to fall, sinking and
falling, remembering the earth
taking shape for a moment
as a formation
of
lines
like broad bars across any space, scrolling space, making it orderly, confining movement to a sequence of long strong black bars, black bars like the kind they keep for prisoners,
an existent prison,
life seeing (seeing life)
seeing life of parting ways of swirling docks of ships coming down from space
seeing life in impossible shapes impossible
seeing life its altered form about gaping space seeing
seeing life seeing
life in watered gardens, where the flowers curl
seeing
life
rising from the water from the ground
seeing
life
in many forms undone
seeing life
in form
(seeing life)
as many million particles,
in the mind.
Imagined to be seen. Above me, the GOLEM still standing to its waist, larger than I might have imagined, a titan, larger than a building, stony scowling face, looking down around, its broad chest very difficult to
cross, like a mountain, so big it
stirred
the world on an end of a stick, we spun, in the golem’s hands (I named him Atlas, impossible weight beneath him)
center of light and crystal towers
center of: glowing
EVERYTHING
in place together around him, around myself (to imagine, like waving lakes no father stood, in place in memory
the grasping life, measured water,
existence, a mother,
be known, circulated reborn
[once again, within doubt as the future would tell it
invisible past, imaginary present
]
to make
known of every thought again
of present thoughts
the
thinking)
to bring life of measured years amidst swirling winds and much, much, much waters, where it seemed no life
could be
ever and again, when I stood, I stared at the sky, drifting in fathoms, surrounded by storms, at the mercy of the golem,
hardly looking out of my face, wondering—
swinging curtains
of much energy—
if
ever
amidst these energies, these rocks, these walls
I would find,
for even just a minute,
a place
where the skies
were
calm.
