Poem 39 – A tongue listens to a war

[The Tolerance Project was asked to submit to another anthology, this one based on Sean Labrador y Manzano's McSweeney's column "Conversations at a Wartime Cafe", with the subtitle: a Decade of War. Sean's questions to contributors were: "How has the first decade of war [in the new millennium] shaped your social fabric? How has the anticipation of the next 10 years of war, a forever war, shaped your outlook?" The Tolerance Project contributors came up with the following response.]


A tongue listens to a war

Driven out of Lebanon warm air opens the lines
Slow moving vowels grip glottal, we pucker
Hiss of splayed gullets marks the gaps
Their right legs slightly forward and left feet turned out

The future blended American would be less intelligent
By definition shall be internalized by targeted anathema
They all run and play together, his eager body quivers
In coy reprisal, discursive suicide fits the niche

This polymer web of four-time relationships
With whom we cannot be reconciled in lamblike game
Scribling and Lying spread Faculties of Profit and Credit
A fantasy of tea & truth and there there below

These anarchists split a magnet for the Ignorance Frame
With the Assistance of a Friend in the Peak
A roving Fancy Burlesques that Sacred Rite
Porn for the whole soul goes to Issah as peace

Let me cruise the blue flame of you or shatter
Velvet curtain of culture deadly teevee scree 

Decorative laminates, moral recovery, picnic ware,
Just this side of heaven is a hole called Rainbow Bridge

Sean cannot rely on symbolic layers of hum
Guaranteeing that Christian will get the aphorism
Bright touch blood your earth language affect
Get ready for permanent enlargement of your dearest part