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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​there'll be no summer today
we're wanting more
dead heat and red onions
the last rites.
 
leaving the city
is like leaving your mother
full of recrimination
ecstasy and despair
 
counting the rate of the burn
of cash
of hope
of rest
 
no rest is needed
we're on appointment
hoplite TSA mules
(airport security, religious rite)
 
all is fled
we'll count your digits
and teeth
weigh and measure your body
 
estimate allowances
grievances
bearances
the history
of your sins
 
then push you in
to the bath desert heat

​over the long boat
reeve the corridor's reward
of sleep
reef the spill and sleet of our regard
unconquerable
 
paris is an old word for boat
jetty scut and scar
dinghy dunderheaded
jar scape skull
for soft and sweep
no better
no trial
 
straight into the sail, death
over île de paris
burning eons' miles

​for Charles Simic
 
I'll go under
on the gun
make me see
what it is you saw
 
the barrier reef of your mind
washes high over the sky
lightning red purple and yellow
how did you get there?
 
the gods are in your living room
making themselves into furniture

who makes you groan to see the city sight you
terrible and honest
 
who burns the night
red in despair
 
who burns our night
black ruinous joy
screaming out of the sound of its highway
 
love and grace
ironed into the tarmac
lucky speared death
shot five hundred thousand miles an hour
 
the simple turn
of light

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