six poems

Curtis Emery

call and response

set a well tempered pulse and follow it
gravity chases a drop of water from a leaf
to a stream, down from a leaf down into a stream
the world changes by a ripple’s worth and plus
or minus a ripple’s worth from the time it dropped down
from the leaf into the stream

“draw a straight line and follow it”
how to catch the spirit
wild and unassuming rabbit line
along a narrow group of hornbeam
palatial undergrowth for a trio of fledglings
call and response, chirping counterpoint

A constant drift the frequency of carved earth
the result of all gathered artifacts—
the shimmer of time’s oscillation accumulated—
to what trigger does this cycle open?

september pulse wave

semi-regular pulsation shudder
each spine stands at attention
the pop of the human threshold
capturing sizeable samples of
salvation product set to some
massive second hand ticking
just outside the universe’s blooming
dress

reality filter

perfect composition is glowing on the

golden ground green’d around the glowing golden growth of light

right where imagination sits—

just out of reach even from the tree of summer’s end

   as autumn bends the heartwood and whose branches frame all

within a window’s view

A Module for Altitude

I am 30 000 ft up thinking abt the end of the world
Same extra-conscious pressure
that builds up under fruit dove wing
launched by some action now well
in time past spent past the point of no return
it seems with each passing in the next ten years
that inertia which pushes us all closer that which makes
us feel the most like shit brings with it its own type of debt
marked by locations of interest which can be pointed to and
understood in such a way that I will not be able to look outside
myself quite the same again a sort of trauma which grows older
and matures caught in the rift of two outer-emotional halflives running
as they would towards well infinity or that time when the fleshy memory
is reformatted partitioned administrator X overgrown by the lichen of non-
memory starved in the desert and left out under the sun which never sets
outside of a dream where nothing is easy and the sky is truly clear all haze
a gaussian machine of well treasured thought which vibrates around the
edges to remind me of fragility of what reality I hold on to may also
hold on to me

SONNET_4

But outside    the dream     each second subtracts
Noonmorning mathematics scoring groove
Tender count leaflets purchased on the bough
Counterlever moonthought behind the mind
My hereness blisters up to join all time
Pop pop pop little universe bursting
Here a wonderful thought & there & there
Obsessive tendrils ever picking ghost notes
Sound map regression echo location
Delicate treading the rim of mine eye
Call and response residual tones bend
Alabaster meaningless to me now

All my epiphanies left me bleeding
Getting further to the middle of it

SONNET_6

Hum hum I love my life and light hum hum
synthesize’d fungus     same soul fungible
a patching for a minor god and thick
tendrils from said heaven trace'd out in sine
waves from a distant thought that numb spot there
transposing divine constellation thought
each pattern infinity well deep thought
fractal insignificance pious spark
the moral center seems to be offset
the lowest common denominator
hyper eternal catalyst mantra
send bad vibes against the common goodness

in a psychic lock       living for today
Wonder will we go to war tomorrow