DEFENSIVE ARCHITECTURE
Such strong winds today
in this forgotten valley.
They come rampant
howling
from the beginning of time to now
and the twilight is fading all around me.
I imagine heavy water
crashing against the shore
which is a sound I remember
from the many years I spent
isolated
on the coast of an imaginary land.
I could see villagers from my window.
They were like rocks
stoicagainst the recurrent battery
of time.
The awakened light of life.
And I have emptied myself
again and again
so as to be whole.
I feel this narrative chronology
my own life
like a dreama structure
that exists underneath
other more obvious textures.
But we were talking about the wind
and how my soul has become a stone
full of its own dead weight.
We do not live in a magical land.
When you come for me
bring everything you have
all your armies
every weapon at your disposal.
Because I am ready to die.
Butas I doI will sing such terrifying songs.
**
MEMORY DOWNTIME
I see you cold
covered with severe reason
and an echoing glare
harsh refractive
too much logic
stifling the heat of your
forever ago smile
my understanding of it
your incandescence now dim
because it is memoryor because
you’ve let your compassion fall
into a simple patterned brain.
Whatever it was between us
fades.
I can’t see the traces
of some previous yesterday in today.
But it was real
would still be
consequential
except for the fact that it is not.
**
NATE PRITTS is the Director and Founding Editor of H_NGM_N (2001), an independent publishing house that started as a mimeograph zine, and he is the author of eight books of poetry, including the recent Post Human (2016) and the forthcoming Revenant Tracer, which won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award and will be published in the fall of 2017. He lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York state.