two poems

David Kaufmann

White and Aimless Signals

The rain’s disguise, the day

Disguised as rain. Somewhere the rain

Is more or less, more dragging

Into cloud, less dragging water for

Clouds, making marshes into bed-

Fellows for the end of time.

Voices collect in the air.

Somewhere America disguises

Itself—it’s somewhere, it's

Better than we are, a patch

In the undergrowth, a drizzle

And a feint. Voices condense

Into clouds. Never mind the extravagance

Somewhere water enters both–

First sickness you say, and health.

Their Recidivism Revisited

A grave of fog—that's easy. You

Just dig. All that materiality, that distance

Of matter, of ideas, of

Ideals, the long, lascivious slip of the tongue.

So take your time over there—

They play three hands at once and only one

Will work. They're waiting. They heave

Satellites, bombs, the falling mercury

Of thought balled into a fist.

Consider their cadence.

Consider breathing until the last.

You never know

It all turns out strange, spiked.

And when they come back—you see

They return, they do come back—they hike under

Cover, blank misty figures in a box.