New Euro Poems: Amiina and Fantômas and Twilight of Birds

Written about the European trip I took with my mother in June, 2018.

1. Amiina and Fantômas

Crack your neck at 110 degrees and pull.
The language of a stream of art into the mind.
Hidden inside a small Norwegic Center
nestled on the edge of a small city of wanderlust:
you will find me and my drooling foolery.
And you will find a packed house of Icelandians
filled with mimicry and authentic patronage.
Echoes of loops but nothing identified:
where do patterns exist and why in the unconscious?
The French would have an answer, decades ago,
but now maybe the unconscious is not so important.
But art is along these hot zone seating arrangements.
And so are the neighbors, who trusted me.
A flipping motion playing out as eyes snap shut.
An arrest to be jolted back into threads of awe.
The dew of the dry space of safety erotically glistens.
I remember Rauan’s advice and counter advice
and the film really does have a certain sound to it.

2. Twilight of Birds

The twilight of birds is the twilight of balance.
Lubrication of the horizontalism and the streaks,
the streak as the repetition of a single knowing.
The known as a pitted entrance and the lurked memories.
It isn’t as clean cut as you once imagined it.
The voices that correspond to your suffering are dull.
Sqwawk and cries and the sickening elation of presence
leads to the panic of stillness on rocks looking north.
A north pole state of mind and kaleidoscopic waiting.
A frigid air the color of reddened knuckles and cheeks.
As I write this a character says, “I watched them die.”
It’s easy to sit through the honey-soaked airwaves
and watch, regularly, the potential and the warping.
Wings and the peeking pecking order of chilled embraces.
Birds you’ve never known and will never see again.
A lighthouse with the path to its neck simply closed.
A duty filling the pits of your alignment thoroughly.