ROBIN WYATT DUNN - POEMS

Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in a state of desperation engineered by late capitalism, within which his mind is a mere subset of a much larger hallucination wherein men are machines, machines are men, and the world and everything in it are mere dreams whose eddies and currents poets can channel briefly but cannot control. Perhaps it goes without saying that he lives in Los Angeles.

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                                       The news
 
​
Can you believe the size of that man's ears?
Look at how the light shines on the asphalt.
Wouldn't you like to have an automobile like that?
 
Look at the man with the baseball bat
He is strong
He is handsome
He's just like you
But more muscular
And standing inside a huge bright green field
With cheering fans arrayed around
In a rough circle
Waving their arms like at a parade
 
Look at the beautiful woman
She is so beautiful
Delicate
And full featured
Sensuous.
 
Here in paradise we have arrayed experience
As in an intricate geometric pattern
Black and ochre
Yellow and white
Spread over the veranda
Come sit down and try this beer
 
The beer is good
Like the beautiful woman is good
Something out of Sumer
or god
something that might remind you of something
something ineffable
something you will never be able to find
 
The man has a gun
Dear god
Dearest god
Let us worship together
The man with the gun




                                   the cheerleader
 

sublimated out of time itself
the cheerleader ordains the fallow year
and the heartbreaking century
wrought into a bundle
of earth
and stone.
 
she levitates
inside of the miasma of american experience
condemning all poverty
as derision
and beckoning the rift
over the rough edges of space
to close in on her
and ours


                                                                  ***



This is a safe space
Where we should not speak
We're not allowed to talk about Jews or Gentiles here
We're not allowed to talk about white people or black people here
Brown people or yellow people or red people.
Let there be silence here
Where we are safe
With our mouths tightly bound
with rope
 
You are safe with me
I know everything you're never going to say



                                                                ***


no one shall redeem you
we have weathered and reasoned with  your curls
mopped your starbursts
murdered your borders.
 
this body
exacts penalties
and earns rewards
there's no going back


                                                                      ***

​​
each lie brings evidence against itself
inside the hernia
a poem
 
inside the poem,
the truth.
 
when I built Jerusalem I used many stones
from many burial grounds
many ovens
for many loaves
 
each child is sacred
each child is dead.
 
each lie brings evidence in court
over the bodies
some of them living
some dead
 
each one speaks louder
over my earphones
 
each one insists that it is eternal
and blameless
each one is screaming
 
now
me
now now now
 
I hold them over my shoulder
on the long trip out
past Mississippi
past Uranus