Louis Armand
Two Poems
Preparations for Winter
A roof and walls remind that rent and taxes make sense
only in a cold climate. Gathering in the life-forces—
bottles, jars, cured meats. Prescriptions of ersatz.
Morning for morning, necessity creates junk, given up
in pursuit of sane-ness. Art also has its morality.
Waiting outside a pawnbroker’s window, a handful of
teeth, glass eyes, a broken tympanum. A poem for
autumn’s last days, in this our era of chronic remorse.
In dreams I struggle beneath some dying Minotaur
that will not give up the ghost. Another day of the
dry heaves, staring into well-springs of boredom.
Why punish ourselves with alternatives? The wound
between the dilemma’s horns beckons like a sex.
Though in the meantime, pretending to states of mind
that freely co-operate, you expect the worst.
Watching Cut Flowers Die
The stillness is so quiet here. Decades
pass before you wake
like space-flight
into the outer limits. I write down
everything in books—
mind a little too blank sometimes
staring into white. Nowhere places.
You lie there naked and wait—
listening to dust settle
on your inner eye. I also
communicate telepathically
with birds and mice. There are
machines to keep watch.
A garbage truck
undoing the secret arrangements of trash
in the middle of the night.
A very cold clear night inside
your idiot madness—
