D. B. DEVILLIERS

you see another out in the nowhere
where by rights there should be none
and what are they doing out here
well
what am I doing out here.

the bear is more afraid of you
than you are of it.
and the man thinks the bear thinks:
the man is more afraid of tooth and claw
than I am of 165 grain soft nosed bullets

and the bear thinks: well of course
because you know what claws are.
what the fuck is a bullet.

in the starstudded absolute wilderness.
ancient light through the spangled lid of the
ancient vault. beyond the firmament curtain
what terrible light. winking shuttles weave
weft and warp between here and forever.

through telescope lens I, the bear,
placidly contemplate portents in
muzzle flash.

it’s later than you think and it’s
farther than you’d think. it’s
farther than you’d
think and it’s far
far later than you
think.

8/30/2025
a nightmare.
approaching light speed this vessel may
distance time itself and shall yet contain
the aching void searing behind my
eyes it is too late, and my back though sturdy shall
bow beneath it as my mouth spits smoke and
bonedust and copper petals wilt redly dewed
from hindbrain stem in the dead false dawn and the
words it has always been too late the words from the
freshly hewn mouth within my mouth from the
very night I was born it was always too late
these godawful words they
pour thickly and congeal
and turn rust
by
morning.

wake.
what silly morbidity to wake to.
it seems I’ll not outgrow it.

…

men cut stone from the mountain.

pull across the known world. toil. labor.
to raise an obelisk against the sky.
the pharaoh would fuck the gods.
compromise in monumental
erection. and as in all such cases of
compromise, each concerned party feeling
cheated, war is not averted but merely
postponed.

men extract tannins from galls of oak.
combine with iron sulfate in preparation of ink.
the poet would use this in an attempt to cheat death.
to approximate love and beauty in verse.
death cheats back and steals both, leaving only words.
it falls then incumbent upon the reader to render.

men cut stone from the mountain.

build cities, shipyards, pads of concrete
from which objects are fired into orbit or
beyond. there is a factory on the other side of the
world where the keys with which I write these words
were injection-molded and packed and shipped to another
for final assembly by machines built and operated by
people whose names I will never know and whose
lives I cannot imagine.

there is a factory ten miles down the road
where I fix machines that make things for people
whose names I will never know and whose
lives I cannot imagine. checking the time, I find
as usual that it is later than I thought.

struck dumb by the abundantly evident impossible
density and complexity of every single thing—
or, in a word,
love—
one hopes for better dreams.

dumbly staring as usual through the
wrong end of the telescope I run
out of words and I run
out of breath and I
run

in circles in circles her eyes too in circles
in lenses in circles and what could they
behold, turning
elliptically and tearing to pieces from misload
and mine groan from hers to the sky to the floor
moved by worn and rusted clockwork
metal on creaking metal wanting
badly for grease

or the problem of course is not in my eyes or
the muscles that move them but in what
resides behind them.

I rub shampoo into my skull and contemplate troubles within.
impulses electrical, chemical. inhibition of reuptake and
myelin deterioration. dead spots from oxygen deprivation.
in both hands I hold these words and others too

sprouting ginger shoots. a wild thing.
it sometimes still can dream.

she said
you don’t know how to talk to girls
and I said
trying to sound cocky I guess
sometimes I wish that were true.

she was right and she was wrong.
I don’t know how to talk to
anyone.