You Have Astounding Cosmic News by Matthew Zapruder

You Have Astounding Cosmic News 

Dear sociologists, I have been asked to explain poetry to you. Thus

in the offices of Dazed Lute Press the clicking begins. Lately

we’ve been conducting field experiments into our private thoughts. One

faction next to the soul-shaped water cooler wonders whether

there’s any reason at all to remember the feeling of being a child. Is

it best to imagine one’s self again beneath the desk as the rusted

air raid siren explodes with its bi-monthly ritual Wednesday afternoon

fear distribution? Like you, I was always holding particular crayons

in the dimness of certain morning assemblies. I have been told

some of you think the only constant is constant observation. I know

city planners design the city and still there are diffusionists who pace

the deep blue edge of do you know you can never try to discover

why why flowers in the cubicles. Between you and me the buildings

also have a space for the sparrow named never who does not sing

yes the cities die when you leave them, yes no one cares what you do.

The glass-covered-in-dust windows of the thrift store display

a mirror from the 1920s. If you take it it will no longer regard young

lovers with important thoughts pushed towards the mighty river. I

will fall in love exactly about a million times and then I will die. Clouds

playing dominoes agree. At Everest on Grand someone eats yak discussing

the endless undeclared war among the neutral provinces. Long

metallic articulated girders cast thin shadows over thousands of windows.

A photograph of a pacifist smiles. He wore a white suit, was a friend

to the poor and worked for the union of unemployed telegraph workers

who listened for signals pulsing as Joni Mitchell never said from the heart of

a distant star. He was like my grandfather, after he died the city fathers

did not know what there were building when they built a museum

to encase a window in a wall brought from a faraway country where

it once overlooked the sea. Evenings through giant speakers people listen

to troubled sounds whales bounce off continental shelves. Go tell

everyone everything is related, the rich own the clouds, and you can

always locate yourself with so many shadows to instruct you.