Reading Du Fu on iPhone, November 2016

With just a tap of my finger

a cascade of images

tumbles from the cloud

like thunderbolts.

A cold wind flays

the skin from your bones

screaming down the Plains

like a water cannon.

- I watched sullen, tearful, weeks ago as the map of the Midwest turned red on my phone like a blood stain or a shadow darkening towards the setting sun.

The black-grass sea is

machined to a rusty channel

and a gross torrent of oil

clogs the turbid waters. Our

blood no longer infused

with arterial fire and arboreal

wending is thick, dirty,

viscous and foul.

- I woke in the night to check the results. The blue screen light like a thin slice of moon in the shadow dark of my bed. I read Du Fu on my phone:

"blossoms clotted there with swollen dark."

(Death, not water, is the universal solvent now).