The Machinery Inside You by Denis Robillard

Frida Kahlo, by anonymous, 1940.

The Machinery Inside You

A train’s  piercing whistle rents the air.
The city’s early vibrations awakens the pavement from
its asphalt amnesia.
Scenes of struggle and survival played out inches from  the
surface of pulsing humanity.
This is the day your soul gets date stamped. There is no other
machinery left inside you.
A frayed landscape without illusion or pretense.
 
Can you match the Fog for density or the Crow for Black?
You move towards  blue pools of morning light
re-assess fecundity, make  clumsy attempts at
language--
Linear tease. Control meat. Delicious camera  eye.
Internal bones. Rhizome replicating machines.
 
It seems we are always moving towards
 that  one perfect reconstituted koan or art form.
 
To study mountains well, sometimes you have to bang your
head against the clouds. Grow another pain in your pocket,
Dig another hole in the ground. Unleash blood.
 
Everything  is dissipated now for the sake of your art.
You bend it willow, will it, shape it from organic memory.
This cold machinery that pulses  inside you, Frida.
 
Denis Robillard

Denis Robillard has had more than 200 poems published across Canada, The USA and Europe since 2005.