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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​go when I may
 

go when I may
who hards the hearing mael strumming stump and sure
hardware and careful bare to muse the roll and dear hearts extended over our embrace
the universe
polyamorous
 
arched in the explosion of its grief
the actors bubble round the fluid pouring out
a wound in stage
black hole or cunt
 
the mouth of birth
 
over its exegesis the sparks of our words and the ends of our asses
the tips of our hands and the leash of our feet
stirs and sands the wood into bearings
beatings
murmurings and lightning storms
surround
 
each thought the circummotion of the fluid
and the quintessence of it
 
broad backed and furious
over the burning hate and malevolent force of love who churns our organs
spritely
certain and toward our desire:
 
Gorgon lover
whose hair recedes under her scalp
shutting the door behind me
 
luckless and feared,
love,
 
go when I say
over the yards and wastes
over the mountain
and then the other mountain
where I can see  you
never again
 
I've been under you
in the mouth of the dream
looking for reasons
looking for the math inside your head
 
who made it grow
vast
over the spark temple wrath and spite
mercurial delight
over your porn-lit eyes
 
whose muse will rush the fates and take the brake from their armored eye,
my love
 
and whose rash
will scuttle
under the bugs
of our clocks and computers
cups and whiskey bottles
 
whose high high hiyyaaa!
marks the picnic table
for lunch
 
Emily Dickinson is reading under the boards
all the words she never showed us
 
we slip her cherries under the tablecloth
inside her eyes spin spiral maps
ambit happiness

​

​we'll burn for you at night
so glum
the runt end of the long week
long century
each permanent midnight
cut into the stick
to mark the pennies for the king in debt
 
for you in debt to us
our visage
luminous in firelight
and dreams
shadows you over the edge of the balcony
where you are sitting

​rage, rage, Dylan
we're following you
 
storming the dip under the dark
into higher orbit:
 
love makes no small potatoes
of our beacon
 
each angry mouth
harbinger now
makes song into stars

​the black bread of life is silent and watchful
needing you near it
needing the melody sung
 
the night watches us too
showering sirens
and holy ejaculations
the names of god from out of the bag lady's mouth

​I want to go back
to everything I ever loved
and dreamed
 
the things I knew was true
and suspected
 
each suspicion was like a birthday
an ornament on the tree of the dungeon Los Angeles
bright and shining with horror
with no abiding sense of unease
only awe
 
the movies used to be hold me under their covers
whispering secrets

it's not enough
you haven't done enough
 
you betrayer
 
your treasonous mouth
is treasonous not in speaking
 
but in your silences

​