The Public Domain

The Crest - Why? (The Early Whitney EP)

Every little renaissance is echoed in the coliseum,
empty to the walls and tin-pan alleys.
Till the space between the skin and shirt grows thin,
till the cells of flesh and material
are indistinguishable under a microscope.
Till all the water goes gas and the pockets pop
after the days gone dark,
and the next chords struck
out of necessity, necessities.

They peel the paper from the walls
or pick another color paint,
and the next chord echoes like shrinking nickles
in a metal elevator falling single file
sized order through the hole in your pocket,
landing round,
a silhouette in the threat of silence

The life span of the flight path
of a slowly sinking, skipping stone.
The dotted line of the walls dying down.
The time span between wave crests is
what makes the crest the crest.

I know the temptation has greatened.
The spines of men hunched from years of keeping nickles
in their shirt pockets to lift these woodmen from behind.
And in one jerk-snap every bone discomplatent place,
like adjusting some rusty segmented piece of an erector set
from the 1950’s.
But the human spine is an iron rod,
and its easier to fill front pockets with nickles
than it is to make a cold metal supple.