exploding poem

with gunpowder and smoke, dark engineering, I will blow –
quick! read me quick the clock is ticking and I can feel
my mechanisms whir goodbye
I will tell you what it looks like from the other
side of the cannonball arc, when the flash
and claps have faded from the field and the dust
has cleared, the singed grass singing high-pitched, sad
goodbye I will tell you if it is glorious and cold
like morning and if a chorus rings out for us who
sputter our lives out
so long, goodbye, the spark is lit and fuse
it smells of sulphur – the wires straight as
the sleek blade-edge – how strange
it seems my springs are jammed the cogs
crunching together, breaking inside me, like
delicate bird-bones, and a little frail skull.

no
it is all a lie and never was that way at all.

the truth is I am plain
and ordinary, commonplace, enduring.
I will always be here, at this address, this light-screen.
on my toes, looking out the window for
your car to drive up. my bed made, groceries bought.

goodbye I’ve lost you forever. stop reading please you see
that I am not strange, any longer.
instead made cheap by jaded eyes and lights and wires.
by people in a world where everything is here, and always.

CDL