The Dummy’s Logbook
I
I have known of a silence
of which no one has spoken--
a solitude carved from the guts
of a tree and upstaged by
my bowed shadow, being
folded into less of myself.
I am dusk squared, forever
talked out my casket on a dare--
my own tongue cobbled out
of a wood block, only granted
its own language when tugged by
a string, opts again to be spot-lit,
and I’m awarded a century to yawn
and draw in the smoke of my creation
till I’m finally fit, called upon, to tell you
just how lacking my nights have been
Dummy's Logbook Act 1
II
If it’s October, it’s the Catskills—
that Lowest of Bar with its backdrop
of lake lit by a cabbage-colored glow
and its seats worriedly teased into clouds,
its salesmen, unpacking everything
out their case besides hit singles, sun,
and its comics making do with that wisecrack
about billiard balls and woodpeckers,
your own mouthpiece thrown so far
south, it’s now I who play host, who
lap ghosts back to life as if strangely cast--
this second act less reassuring than the first
soft sold as if it was golden voiced,
willed up from the dregs of a glass
or hard-boiled like eggs filling a void--
post-has-beens long past-having-any-of-it.
