Like all strangers who temporarily find themselves moving in the same direction we look out the window without really seeing or down at our phones trying to catch the dying signal then the famous lonesome whistle so many singers have sung about blows and our bodies shudder soon we will pick up speed and pass the abandoned factories there has lately been so much conversation about through broken windows they stare asking us to decide but we fall asleep next to each other riding into the tunnel sharing without knowing the same dream in it we are carrying something an empty casket somehow so heavy only together can we carry it over a bridge in the snow emerging suddenly into the light we wake and open our laptops or a book about murder or a glossy magazine though we are mostly awake part of us still goes on solving problems so great they cannot be named even once we have reached our destination and disembark into whatever weather for a long time there is a compartment within us filled with analog silence inside us the dream goes on and on
Your eyes are not always brown. In the wild of our backyard they are light green like a sunny day reflected in the eyes of a frog looking at another frog. I love your love, it feels dispensed from a metal tap attached to a big vat gleaming in a giant room full of shiny whispers. I also love tasting you after a difficult day doing nothing assiduously. Diamond factory, sentient mischievous metal fruit hanging from the trees in a museum people wander into thinking for once I am not shopping. I admire and fear you, to me you are an abyss I cross towards you. Just look directly into my face you said and I felt everything stop trying to fit. And the marching band took a deep collective breath and plunged back into its song.
I wish I would like a ship that all night carries its beloved captain sleeping through no weather slip past dawn and wake with nothing but strange things that did not happen to report but I get up in the dark and parachute quietly down to the kitchen to begin the purely mental ritual plugging in of the useless worry machine above me she sleeps like the innocent still dreaming older sister to all gentle things the white screen impassively asks me to say what does not matter does so I shut it down and think about the lake near where I live it’s a lagoon getting lighter like an old blue just switched on television maybe a Zenith it has two arms they stretch without feeling east to embrace an empty park a little light then everything has a shadow I almost hear a silent bell low voices I brought us to this old city the port connects to the world where everyone pretends to know they live on an island waiting for the giant wave in some form maybe radiation in the yard the wind blows the whole black sky looks down for an instant through my sleepy isolate frame a complex child hologram flickers angrily holding a green plastic shovel then disappears leaving an empty column waiting Bill who I knew was so angry is dead whatever he was going through I kept away I never did anything I love his poem he was really good I keep forgetting his last name I always leave his handmade book on my desk not to remember but because for hours after everything everyone says sounds like a language I never knew but now speak spirit I know you would have hated how I think you would have liked this music in another room pushing the alien voice into the millennium the one you left so early spirit you were right all noble things are gone except to struggle and be loved
Today in El Paso all the planes are asleep on the runway. The world is in a delay. All the political consultants drinking whiskey keep their heads down, lifting them only to look at the beautiful scarred waitress who wears typewriter keys as a necklace. They jingle when she brings them drinks. Outside the giant plate glass windows the planes are completely covered in snow, it piles up on the wings. I feel like a mountain of cell phone chargers. Each of the various faiths of our various fathers keeps us only partly protected. I don’t want to talk on the phone to an angel. At night before I go to sleep I am already dreaming. Of coffee, of ancient generals, of the faces of statues each of which has the eternal expression of one of my feelings. I examine my feelings without feeling anything. I ride my blue bike on the edge of the desert. I am president of this glass of water.
Composer Missy Mazzoliand her ensembleVictoire have teamed up with percussionist Glenn Kotche (of Wilco), synth producerLorna Duneand virtuosic vocalists Mellissa Hughes, Martha Cluver and Virginia Warnken (of Roomful of Teeth) to record Mazzoli’s expansive new work, Vespers for a New Dark Age. Over two years in the making, Vespers for a New Dark Age is a brazen interpretation of the vespers prayer service that replaces the customary sacred verses with poems by Matthew Zapruder.