What if the brain’s pink impulses can only disappoint us, what if why, wearing that black,
backless address, is not a who?
We are the ones who do the crimes: and yet you are the wanted one.
The episodic soul is, like a sitcom, filmed in unreal time.
To care about this sort of thing is as wise as a digital clock.
But if the sky weren’t trapped in days’ and nights’ revolving door, the undomesticable
zodiac would use our every coffined litter as a tray.
And arguably London is more spit than shine, for days;
but does it not shine somewhere: somewhere so clean we can see ourselves in everything?
If you can, give voice to the throaty red anthurium, to the window, to the wall
that makes these rooms’ matter, and these stanzas, matter.
Through change, a whipping post becomes postmodern art.
Through change, a Second Advent turns to venture capital.
The episodic soul is moving at a quickening remove
from this unchecked, unbalanced world of checks and balances . . .
Dances a totentanz and sings otototoi
at billions of creatures clocking off into the void.
Then comes to us our luck, like a black cat
in a dark room, purring ergonomically.
Then sends it us, price-guns like tasers at our hips,
to value all the world – its messianic shabbiness.
Both pearls and vinegars have mothers, it now seems,
and the mother of invention is necessity;
and boy do we need you.
Ralphs's After You Were, I Am will be published Fall 2025. Used with permission of publisher, McSweeney's.
2025