Steve Halle (Illinois, USA): from Blackbirds

Under the desk-
red plastic box
of Legos, from which
things were built
demolished brick
by plastic brick,
a place of origins
lays in wait

behind blue blinds,
a red light, an imagining,
made real by imagination.
The memory of its glow,
the ghost apparatus,
rising mind at bedside dawn.

Etched in the marble
of a city's empirical consciousness,
a dead man eternally bleeds.
Voices plead with his blood
for certitude, and construct

a reply, feels real enough
to pacify the weary mind,
the dry throat forming words,
yet the body reaches after
its own and another's carnality,
only flesh memories pacify,
not scripted visions of fantasy.

The lampshade grants
the bedroom understated light.
A turn-dial color TV,
one-hundred faux-fur paws,
magnitudes of material,
when love is pulled from warm hands.


c. Steve Halle 2006