Geography of Buttons

Flat, faded moon, color of old teeth,
secured small against the nakedness
we fear so much, a tiny “Stop,” or
unlatched fast when we say, “Go,”
to touch our way to freedom. Crazy

how this glint of bone barely there,
describes our one minute yes one
minute no approach to clothes, life,
sewn machine right, threaded tight
as if by little children, exported sins,

a technology so old you can’t believe
you wear it still (what awaits life after
buttons?), the Middle Ages purchased
with a Citi bank card, bulletproof...
everything else designed to break.

One day, maybe our first fastener
will be plugged into the power grid!
Now, it’s a disc of a dead cat’s eye,
albino plastic, one of the first feels
for my fingers each morning, daily

dreary tasks before work, complete lack
of enigma, satelites for wrinkled planets,
last bit of apparel without logo, quick
picket fence against trespass, bleached
stones up a heaving creekbed, mute little

guards that disassemble quickly, ivory’s
ne’er do well cousin, mother of pearl’s
plain-faced bastard of a son, diffident
in the face of fashion, puritan simple,
hedonist pills. If the sky softly rained

buttons how we’d love their sound off
the pavement! Hell, you could throw
handfuls of them like rice at a new bride,
or melt them down into new fingernails.
Put buttons in the palm of a dreamer

and you’ll wonder why you have ears,
so much sense and nonsense, it’s no
wonder we have parasites in Sierra
streams, same as this, no? A poet
is much less bones than mud! You

dream stupid or don’t dream at all?!?
Had a sleep that felt like pavement,
but I’ve got fingers like a bee hive
on a keyboard to take something...
collapse probability to a thing!

Like the woman who channeled
all the prayers from Soledad, and
said, “The way a SoCal winter creek
is shallow after a day of rain, but it
still knocks you off your feet

and drowns you. They find your body
in the ocean because that’s where
the creek goes.” Or learning French
from a voice on the stereo: you fail
to keep up if you take time to translate.

Just sit there long enough, and know it!
Not like the media world, where it’s told
who is clergy, who is sacrifice, who is idol,
and when is worship. All news, after all,
is, “Hurry. Come with us to die.” Honest

to tell a single other person I stare down
my jeans the Cliffs of Moher, my shoes
disappeared in ocean fog, and the wild
Atlantic awaits before I can ever see you.
Eventually, old men write of the benefits

of betrayal. If the true vision doesn’t come,
every day’s schedule envelopes in wet leather,
shrinking. The work days feel like bound feet.
Age becomes your reason to be tired, then
you give up. Surprise! Every drowning victim

dead of exhaustion! You loathe the train come
so far for you to board because it took so long.
She told me every day is an embryo to enter
—slime, muck and mire. It’s where you live
to see the world, and if you’re at all good,

you still have time to grab the ill-formed,
stickly leg and refashion it to wing. Yes,
the burden is to believe, but look at all
that comes alive in a handful of buttons
when we blow things back to probability.