Tim Rogers
THE ASSESSMENT (with a Little of Wm. Bonney)
I.
Hopeful poisons are a feint, a fake, they may even be portrayed
as props in the rich tradition that cinema creates
at the very least they may convey a taste of your small but still
indelicate amour
sampled through the ruby rouge of stolen lips
a hope long since foreclosed
by the escalating debits
on our romantic ledger.
If you care
to remember we had
scripted a professional appraisal
for tomorrow together
with that cad in Cuba who’s been mostly fast
asleep, shit-faced under his fez and retching since his Friday nightcap last.
That’s why I decided to cancel
the pre-scheduled consultation written in
the blood that no one’s ever wasted.
Unfortunately for us the next expected curtain call
it turns out now, rehearsed
with the devotion of an operatic ingenue
arches over all that will not be
performed as it had been intended to debut
come the 14th of the short and frigid
winter month much loathed,
the day we usually celebrate in honor of the patriarch
of matrimony
And on top of all that, the execution
of the contract to promise our mutual enrichment
having been the guarantor’s bastard son
was intended
to be in place fully and without mistake
at a time so unholy as to ensure that the sun had not had its chance to rise.
II.
So, tomorrow, will you still be headed on your way
to the natal city that once hosted
your diaspora? To discuss the scattered developments
planted in time by the rapist of your smiles?
Are we to raise that scandalous act again? I will
tell you a new
incident
appears
to have arrived quietly today, hidden inside its butcher-paper wrapper.
It feels like it might be a warm, newly woven cardigan
of absence
I could make a claim
to you that it came
from the exquisite Bluebell Hotel, venue
to the mutual owner of our voracious and consuming heartache,
but that wouldn’t be true.
No, not at all. That would be another falsehood
fitted with the IOU’s we used to use to pay
the translators of our plays. The dramas
we drank waiting for the ink to dry.
No matter what I do
or alternatively whatever I had ever vowed not to
this sense of an empty sweater is going to fill that drained carafe come sunrise
is going to knit a vest of kevlar
to use against everything it deems necessary
to quell the thirst of an emergent urgency.
This forces me to leave that hollow volume with you
along with some outdated, dogeared paperbacks
that no one has ever expressed any desire to read.
On the envelope in manuscript I’ve written what you’ve ignored
on the dusty desktop
where a bronze bell tolls for the guests that come quietly
in the cold morning hours of autumn.
III.
I wishbone your colt
peacemaker
tonight and always
May your chambers be invariably filled
THE EMOTIONAL VARIABLES OF DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS
(A Postcard Representation of the Speed of Light vs the Effects of Heat)
the beauty of light
sparked by a train ride
through a bruised night
of tender rattling cries
of the slim sliver offered
the small slice of the ocean’s waves
a narrow blindness denied
by every lover
scuddering clutches
illuminate an architecture of desire
the afterimage of a sunset’s dominion
an abuse of oxygenated carbon
inbred in the heart
as it crosses the single arch
of a steel bridge built
of crossing reinforcements anchored
to deep concrete
over the raw excavated scar
the folded alignments
closed against the common brutalities
of turbulent air
a pattern etched into a label
a fixed graphic mixing instantaneous speed
with the waiting, the impatient waiting
the waiting
in a game
of estimations
half
as fact half
as a memory escaping
a painting of her face
remember the moon
circling in a search for meaning
in the alien sounds of a foreign tongue
a cartoon postcard
commemorating the act of travel
depicted with a choreography of song
the station, each station, the one passed
and the one next to come
an extravagance of stasis
a struggle
with the impedimenta
of moving like a particle
I.
Hopeful poisons are a feint, a fake, they may even be portrayed
as props in the rich tradition that cinema creates
at the very least they may convey a taste of your small but still
indelicate amour
sampled through the ruby rouge of stolen lips
a hope long since foreclosed
by the escalating debits
on our romantic ledger.
If you care
to remember we had
scripted a professional appraisal
for tomorrow together
with that cad in Cuba who’s been mostly fast
asleep, shit-faced under his fez and retching since his Friday nightcap last.
That’s why I decided to cancel
the pre-scheduled consultation written in
the blood that no one’s ever wasted.
Unfortunately for us the next expected curtain call
it turns out now, rehearsed
with the devotion of an operatic ingenue
arches over all that will not be
performed as it had been intended to debut
come the 14th of the short and frigid
winter month much loathed,
the day we usually celebrate in honor of the patriarch
of matrimony
And on top of all that, the execution
of the contract to promise our mutual enrichment
having been the guarantor’s bastard son
was intended
to be in place fully and without mistake
at a time so unholy as to ensure that the sun had not had its chance to rise.
II.
So, tomorrow, will you still be headed on your way
to the natal city that once hosted
your diaspora? To discuss the scattered developments
planted in time by the rapist of your smiles?
Are we to raise that scandalous act again? I will
tell you a new
incident
appears
to have arrived quietly today, hidden inside its butcher-paper wrapper.
It feels like it might be a warm, newly woven cardigan
of absence
I could make a claim
to you that it came
from the exquisite Bluebell Hotel, venue
to the mutual owner of our voracious and consuming heartache,
but that wouldn’t be true.
No, not at all. That would be another falsehood
fitted with the IOU’s we used to use to pay
the translators of our plays. The dramas
we drank waiting for the ink to dry.
No matter what I do
or alternatively whatever I had ever vowed not to
this sense of an empty sweater is going to fill that drained carafe come sunrise
is going to knit a vest of kevlar
to use against everything it deems necessary
to quell the thirst of an emergent urgency.
This forces me to leave that hollow volume with you
along with some outdated, dogeared paperbacks
that no one has ever expressed any desire to read.
On the envelope in manuscript I’ve written what you’ve ignored
on the dusty desktop
where a bronze bell tolls for the guests that come quietly
in the cold morning hours of autumn.
III.
I wishbone your colt
peacemaker
tonight and always
May your chambers be invariably filled
THE EMOTIONAL VARIABLES OF DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS
(A Postcard Representation of the Speed of Light vs the Effects of Heat)
the beauty of light
sparked by a train ride
through a bruised night
of tender rattling cries
of the slim sliver offered
the small slice of the ocean’s waves
a narrow blindness denied
by every lover
scuddering clutches
illuminate an architecture of desire
the afterimage of a sunset’s dominion
an abuse of oxygenated carbon
inbred in the heart
as it crosses the single arch
of a steel bridge built
of crossing reinforcements anchored
to deep concrete
over the raw excavated scar
the folded alignments
closed against the common brutalities
of turbulent air
a pattern etched into a label
a fixed graphic mixing instantaneous speed
with the waiting, the impatient waiting
the waiting
in a game
of estimations
half
as fact half
as a memory escaping
a painting of her face
remember the moon
circling in a search for meaning
in the alien sounds of a foreign tongue
a cartoon postcard
commemorating the act of travel
depicted with a choreography of song
the station, each station, the one passed
and the one next to come
an extravagance of stasis
a struggle
with the impedimenta
of moving like a particle
Copyright © Tim Rogers 2019
Tim Rogers is an American poet living in Czechia, Europe. He graduated from Brooklyn College with an MFA, having studied under the tutelage of Allen Ginsberg. Today he runs an English-language bookstore and sits on the board of non-profit involved with teaching English to school-age children and English-language resource and community center. His poems have appeared over the years in Bombay Gin, Mudfish, Brooklyn Review, The Transnational, Otoliths and After Hours among other literary outlets. He has been anthologized in The Return of Král Majáles.
