Samuel Amadon

from MONOLITH

I stand my monolith in the dark, and step

silently into crystal evening’s  

moonlit thought. I stand my monolith on stairs,

on escalators of abandoned

malls, on television couches, on waiting-

room carpet squares flecked with dull, dead stars.

I stand my monolith in the passenger

seat of my car, and I drive with it

for the edge of town, where lots spread out as horse

farms, storage houses, retail supply

facilities, and dumps. Under nights bright as

synth tracks, I stand my monolith in

parking-lot spreads of bottle glass before gold-

gray buildings, where nothing has a name,

where I like to lean on the cool, hard wire of

approaching weather, time, people, death,

and events. You have to look at how

decisions are made, as the last idea in

a room does more than wait, it remakes

the place, a legacy-thought translating through

time’s molecules, like a setup

of desks, how it can irradiate your “day,”

reader, as you turn another corner to

find things aren’t as you’d have them be, as

others collide their lives through your choices, their

outcomes adding to the stack, sheen, plate

you eat through. I eat through my dinner, and take

my monolith for a clear breath on

a small, square, northeastern back porch, whatever

the word is for that, I can’t find it,

as night makes itself out of lit garages,

basketball-hoop shadows, driveway tar,

the lure of streetlamps progressing in a line

toward barroom noises, lights, tap beer

content as a scent darted in the air. I

take my monolith into ideas

I had in the past of the Wednesday bar

before Thanksgiving, a town crowd home,

a loud warm middle for voices, middle packing

in past what you planned for, you stand it,

your body speaking a middle fluorescence,

swirling in not for you.

from MONOLITH

When I lose my monolith, I take

it back. I step my feet along the street in

a reverse path. I walk back over

what I did, what I will do, differently,

when I relive this winter of my

quiet adolescent obsessions, back when  

I was painting metal miniatures

for a game I found myself too sheepish to

ask if I could play, standing in some

strip-mall store like a neighbor’s basement, never

letting my fingers leave the metal

bar I firmly pulled in silent behind me

as I entered. A pause in the air,

but just for me, where the future ripples in

what otherwise seems static as an

apple, red and prompt, even with the eye, held

so nothing stops, hallways, a window

slips open a sliver on the highway, and

it’s thunderous, how often something’s

wrong, and then I put my body down, knowing

there’ll be another warm center to

the room, like a cup of tea, music, alone,

dust settling in the window-shade

slats, a bright spot swarming across the wound rug,

so that I have to check the edges,

pick the pear’s underside to find it thin, soft,

and slice it off.

from MONOLITH

Whoosh. I come out of the dark into

my room, where the night has set everything

still. I am quiet when I rise, when

I slip my legs out from the tuck, lift onto

the balls of my feet, pressing each in

on uneven shapes across the floor, where I

drift around my monolith, and see

it, here, where it can’t be seen by more than my

fingertips sliding as if to find

a burr, as if to find a burr at the edge

of a knife pulled from the electric

sharpener. I want to know if I’m doing

it right. Alright. I’m awake and standing here

for a moment when I need to be

asleep, as if that’s what it all comes down to,

my heart beats to keep my heart beating,

and I fuck it up again, stand myself here

in the middle of my sleep, waving

my fingers through the night it takes, it takes me

through till morning, breathing out and in,

my thoughts like sentences I can’t control, as

I start saying one thing and end with

the thing I was trying not to think about

as it happens, as it rolls over

the center of my mind, a rug unfurling,

more than long, unending, blue-black forth

it comes, keeps coming, a shark in the water,

I’m still afraid of that.

from MONOLITH

This is how

I am. I lose out on the moment right when

the moment exists, when the moment

lifts, sparkles, changes things, shifts like in Brit Lit

2, Wordsworth, I pushed the reading back

in my bag, five-subject spiral notebook with

drawings of tree trunks extending past

both ends of the page, and I wrote then, there, in

pen, blue, black, something I thought wild and

new, the thought of that moment whirls back at me

an inky thrust, propeller-waked, starts

image-strong but all that comes back to me are

the edges. What’s left of the feeling.

What’s left of me to feel the feeling. I could

sit with my monolith until dawn,

not reading, not being in what I say nor

how I say it, nor the sentence I

use for what I would better think thoughtlessly,

nor the time I would think it in, not

here, not the middle of the night, not awake,

not angry, not breathing in nor out

to make a thought.