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Cruel Month; Étude by Thomas Zimmerman




Cruel Month


A Hamlet sky this morning: undecided. 

Rain at noon. Fruit trees in bloom. The sex

of pollen in my eyes. I love this time

of year, the beauty and the terror. Use-

or-lose day off, I kill time listening

to bootlegged Dylan albums, lambs’ blood in

his voice. The spruces sway like mastodons, 

time’s wheel’s turned prehistoric. Could be any 

era, human suffering’s the same. 

Oh Tom, relax, my darker angel says,

you know the up-close view is tragic. Praise 

the Fates that you’re not weepy. Wimpy maybe. 

Ask your mom. Oh snap, she’s dead. You look 

like her. At least you haven’t grown a beard.


Étude

 

The dog and you are lying in the living

room, a golden evening sun outside,

no need to light the fireplace. It’s Glass’s

Études for Piano in your headphones.

Makes you pensive. Maybe it’s the beer.

Or pressure of mortality. You dream

you're with the compost at the curb. You try

to settle down and track the actual,

then find the crack in it that lets the real

and healing light seep in. Last midnight, while

you kissed your lover’s thighs, you thought of what

a poet said: to write a poem, dip

a bucket in the hidden river of 

the psyche, see what nourishment comes up.

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