Michael Davidson

Absent

as the sound of conversation in an adjacent room

is an index of affections shared across a table

among strangers eliciting concern for filling

the space of an hour until the rain stops

with the ambient noise of glasses, footsteps, doors

closing and someone shouting over the din

and the rain coming down on the skylight

preventing night from coming inside

and disturbing this drone

of sociality that serves as a measure

of this matter of attention.

Social Media

because something is always out of alignment

causing pain to someone stuck on the 101

on their way late to the dentist offering respite

from unfulfilled expectations at an early age

that continue into this lane where everyone

else drives one of those silver cars

so you can point out that an infraction

back in the 70s caused irreparable harm

involving a ruptured disk or protestant

letter in that journal still nagging

after all these years and of course

said person is still alive and to all

appearances successful while living

in a town with no visible means

of survival no wonder

the water is unsafe to drink at least

we have recourse to shared

community and discussion

untroubled by ego and self-conscious

oblivion.

Apophasis in Public

In the interests of fair play

I won’t say anything too critical

of the surd who occupies our speech,

this is one way of avoiding the fact

that we hide in signs of assurance

the germ of our extinction,

and we fail,

but failure is a kind of renewal, even

(and this is the exciting part)

another opportunity to talk

despite the crash of other voices

and music in the background,

what he means by that

cannot be verified

by any appeal to its subject,

a cadaver is also meat,

blue is a shaded green,

China can be reinvented

as the latest version of ourselves

where “our” means not me,

cigarettes were lit, lights dimmed

when we were social, now

there are no more cigarettes, rooms

or conversations, “if”

is a tunnel into “would”:

if he appears at the scene after the fact

he therefore caused it

or might as well have

wearing such dubious clothing

and distinctive hair,

the less of us on the street

the more he occupies space

and the words in between.