Sam Langer














TRUE SURVEY





TRUE SURVEY







You said there was a god in summer
Paraded on sticks between viewer and habitat
Which in turn would zap us apart
If we grew too close. But now
You take those dreams you reappeared in as evidence
Of your fitness to sleep through this lived-on life
All along, of all the others, because they begin to outline
An eerie boom one would think you might have heard
A bit sooner as you went cancelling forth
With both arms round the lamp, hugging tight,
But bulb intact, but worried
That our too-eager repulsion of the possibilities
Might be exactly what gave way to their claws,
And then woke from the liverish nightmare
To a bombination pretty ordinary although severe enough
To consign yourself to its endless changes of heart.
In the heat – how those chickens
Only had to wander round a few corners in hope
Of sundries to start leaving behind a fragrant trail
Underfoot, and so toothsome upon the oppressed senses of
The famous Average Passer-by! who was frying anyway,
And far too harassed by the management of their own ashes
To give it a lot of thought, or indeed, totally possessed, foaming at the snout,
Dissociated from the dividing up of their own organs among the recommended mechanisms of 
      the day
While wrath was not so much hurled down as filtered through
One of those tap-sieves one who knows what they are doing screwed on
Several hours ago, or was it last year – these days the time reduces to such a special blend of
      things
And people and services; services for things, services for people, people for services
As the paperclip is phased out of the running of the destroyer
And it turns its Teflon sides from home to point its intricate, stabbing prow towards a
      horizon without land or end,
While back on the left-behind continent the grass grows up into its slot.
Few people notice the joy that is unpacking in the hearts of the crew
And contaminating their every task, their faces look so preoccupied with getting the job done
Or perhaps they are just mugging for the surveillance apparatus
Since it has been rather unclear what their job is, ever since it became so "radically
      expanded";
But it is joy that is dumping its heavy bag in the vestibule
And handing out gifts to the children, each carefully
Chosen to match the particular child's well-known temperament
Or ingrained hobby before the snow
Has even melted on its boots
To catch the child's heart in time
Before too many remarks have gotten mixed into it
And it stops caring too much what strangers bring because all
Have become strange to it and it has its own sources of amusement
In fountains that bubble beyond the thresholds and airlocks of the familial three-bedroom
      residence, hot springs
Between day and night over which it starts to enjoy total control – yes, joy !
That adoptive relative, that unbidden toy that also
Points, like a weapon it will take a while to get the hang of, both back and forth,
At everything that has been eliminated so far and at everything and so on,
In the bliss of unconcern that a leak has erased
The first officer, because a cloud of tiny, automated spiders will soon knit the space shut
With their webs like they always do.
 
But what of that dilettante we left in flames
A while ago? Have they reached
The expected consistency yet, or are they not quite crisp enough,
Or are they but a smudge at this point, one more minatory residue
In an overall effect generated by the evacuation of the context?
But as the agents of the citizen adaptability bureau clear a path to the wreckage
So that it can be as rapidly resiled into a generative transparency-centraliser and sculptural
Health and safety dominion as possible; and as they vacuum up the more intransigent
      perioikoi
Into locally-designed utensils, with a sort of "mustn't grumble" panache;
We catch sight of them (the dilettante) again over the shoulder of a friendly-looking graphic
      designer
Who is just now acquiring some complicatedly ethical hamburgers –
Not quite burned and not quite raw, their room is quasi-outdoors
And they are in it, as though in a shimmer of time and atmospheric music
And they hunt round with creamy eye in a fine frenzy for some envelopes marked
Final Warning that must be around here somewhere,
As they were put aside confidently long ago, before it all began coming out wrong, as well it
      might.
There's a sourness comes over the scene like rain, once a minute, warm and dry,
And has blown over before it could be known
On tongue or free-floating bellybutton, whether as a welcome ally
Or friend painful to the head none could rightly say,
But welcome in pain anyway, with hair pushed back
Trustingly from the forehead, thrust up just because
It didn't need to be harvested because it has already turned the flakes
That were so important to it over to a wide range of inscrutable hands,
Who promise and promise to bring even more along later if enough
Satchels can be summoned in from around the district to contain it
With no further damage to what used to be left in store.