The Devil’s Almanac
Eric Nelson
Snow like happiness
Shapes everything.
Then the melt,
The man’s head
Caving in on itself.
::
Beneath the heaviest stone
A worm can live.
But who wants to live
Like a worm?
::
Only someone who still has it
Can say
Hope is a curse.
::
What a strange piercing—
Hundreds of small birds,
Each shaped like an arrow
Flying in the shape of an arrow.
::
There’s no future in old age
But immortality
Never goes out of style.
::
History is written by the winners,
Literature by the losers.
::
Wind careens like a drunk,
Slamming doors one minute,
Shushing itself the next.
::
Reading Pound:
Some can.
Some cantos.
::
Happy memories
Are the saddest.
::
All night not rain but stars
Pour down. Red giants,
White dwarfs fill the garden,
The sky drained of its wishes.
::
Animals know what to do
With the dead—
Roll in them.
::
God’s humor:
What a 127 mile-per-hour wind
Does to a 55 mile-per-hour sign.
::
Love begins
Where heaven ends.
::
Like white robes
Egrets hang against the
Blackened wind, the
Enormous wall of wailing sky.
Very small white robes.
::
Love’s syllogism:
Her nipples are hard.
His cock is hard.
Love is hard.
::
Clouds sail into morning
Like galleons.
By noon a few ripped flags
Blow away.
::
It’s not the going home
That’s hard.
It’s the wanting to.
::
Before the wheel,
The basket.
Before the need to go
The urge to hold.
::
On a turd baked
White in the sun,
A butterfly rests.
::
It’s solitude if you like it.
Loneliness if you don’t.
::
Why oppose opposites?
A hammer pulls as well as drives.
Only what is buried grows.
::
The frog’s lament:
Sometimes everything
Seems so hopless.
::
The trees grow bald.
Leaves skitter
On the street like teeth.
::
God’s humor:
Lightning, then thunder.
The attack, then the warning.
::
Believe ghosts
Before angels.
Ghosts speak
From experience.
::
Darkness to wake to.
Darkness all day.
Between rains, clouds
Shaggy as wolves
Slip through the trees.
Muddy prints appear
On the floor.
::
Prayerless, the wounded
Cat heals itself
With its own rough tongue.