Alien Prayer Flag

 

I.

 

 

For those who’ve heard a loved one gone

To visit that city and take the drive that got them lost

Visit here

 

 

The city has a name, but it’s different for everyone

I pronounce it in this way:

Ning like ning – that’s easy

Bo like bwuoh – that presents a challenge

You may know it in another way entirely.

 

 

Ah, the billion nameless hungry faces

And one lonely greasy girl steps forward

“Stay here while I fetch you a drink of water”

“Make yourself comfortable”

Drink it fast,

The cup won’t last long…

Faster, I mean it!

“This is the city of the thinnest paper.”

 

Once there, she’ll ask you to please

Not to disrupt the ritual

With your visible, drippy sobs

 

 

Eat any food that is offered to you and you’ll enjoy this

First contact, congratulations, explorer!

In this moment you are a superhero – God Grief – that’s it

Serious, staid and steadfast over all things human, in the famed city

 

 

 

 

 

 

II.

 

 

A shortening. A quickening.

Hot throat and all the internal vomits

The effect of speed on the inner ear and the return…to…stationary.

 

 

The ocular lens-clock tightens

Makes any music inappropriate

As sense bandwidth is strictly rationed

By burlap monks with spiny fingers, dirty nails

 

 

They crave silence and nobody minds skin irritation

They work on narrowing, calibrating a beam of laser light

However an occasional peek at cartoons is forgivable,

Especially since the one who is dead cannot be reached via laser

 

 

These negotiations continue

While flash is as small as starlight

 

 

“This is what it feels like” is stupidum say the monks

Torture, torch you’re, the tortured

 

 

Blank plank adrift upon furious frothy action

Then the risen smack of the real moment (y) and real place (x)

 

 

God Grief is lost in Ning (ning) Bo (bwuoh)

Stretching his hamstrings like an oblivious runner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

III.

 

 

My sister is too beautiful for most

Her goatherd tragedy spoken in smooth lines that dilate

I weep to hear her latest news

 

 

She walks around the blind city

A city of too many rabbit holes

“This is the city of the most ways to get lost”

 

She is my walking talking potential eternal sadness

The child whose smiley-face egg, once broken, shatters me

The huddled woman whom God Grief has sworn to protect

 

 

One glance into her eyes deletes the Hero’s mechanism

And sends them tumbling down a taxi-cab, flying in a light cascade

One glance spits them out into the river

 

 

(Escape is a delicious apple

A moondance Gravitron whirl of limbs

Wide, wide open to the free flow of esteem-less sex

 

 

Drink to smoke to breathe to bathe

Negating pent up penthos pours

If all are lost along the way, that’s fine)

 

 

Grief visits Beauty

The combination is deadly swollen

Each offering the other’s knife sharpener

Metal running along stone

 

 

The city towers were never so high as tonight

Each one wears a different fascinator

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IV.

 

 

The crowd forms

A long line on the sidewalk

It must be something good

For them to wait so long

Take a look through the shop windows –

Ah, but the sun’s glare.

 

 

One girl in line

Erupts in laughter

Throws her hand on the shoulder of the old man in front of her

And bounces bounce her bosom bounces

 

 

The old man chuckles

At the girl, heaving

At her breasts as they heave

At her buckteeth

At her breasts, at her buckteeth

At the reveal of skin

Above her pants below her shirt

Laughter belting out past

Her buckteeth and pouring

From her forged chest

 

 

And now everyone’s laughing

See, the sign on the door says:

“No More -This Is The City of Not Enough”

 

God Grief holds a Chinese churro

Dipped in soymilk

Barely tasting

Sweet, empty flavor.

Grief’s luck is strange like that…

 

 

 

 

 

 


V.

 

 

I held a shirt you wore and

All the time you wore it

 

 

A brooch was pinned to it

I removed it and put it on me

It is a heavy ceramic bust

 

 

I’ve gone through your things so many times

Look at me, I

Jingle with your many cameos

 

 

I found a hideous shell you liked

In your chest of things

Its spiky section hurt to hold

 

 

I’m starting to remember things about you that were less than friendly.

Still,

You.

 

 

The dead flesh speaks in conjugated color

Yell oh

Yel laugh

Yell ow

 

 

God Grief lost his ride along the Inner Ring highway.

Now he walks, carrying carrion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VI.

 

 

Urgency emergence in the final tally

The march away from me

My last moment to haggle:

I would die for you, who is dying

I would live for you, who is dying

 

I cannot, so

I accept the quoted price

I’ll look for firm confirmations later

When it’s still –

 

 

The dam bursts and floods a vein of ochre

Mud coating all

The thinly coated citizens

They hug and scratch and even dance.

 

 

My sister is gone

Beauty is again, ready for anything

She lifts her new hand with a whir of pistons

 

 

God Grief mumbles about a sacred cleanup

 

 

Hopeless to the last transaction,

He wanders the city of Ningbo alone

Leaves the poem

Leaves, the poem, the city