Analog Dawn by Lance Stemen


Before there was a beige fortress 
and short nights rendering 
idiocy to my getting idiot-dressed. 
The chunked Harm-O-Lodge 
air called to bedlessness. 
Like a saltwater taffy-making machine 
the matador rug wore 
this tumultuous folding shelf we call “accidentally good,”
with a sideways glance from poise 
that gave what lies beyond propaganda. 
The joydivision to approach 
is the silt cloud that films dead command 
of these entitled to commodify 
the heat of your light. Ziggomatic
chimed lack of slats & Kobo° schema.

Earth corrugated, lethargica 
and the mode selector is recumbent. 
The dawn tastes magnet-thick. 
Orange tiles joyfully 
told with blanketing angles promise 
of configuration. The work 
wakes up, muscular cables
iridescent and ice-
blanched. The walls disguise a real mass 
my envelope will press.

Dogtag waste-bugatti around
the necks dredge against the escalator
in controlled fall.
This platform puts me afoot a bar
of sun realer than suns.
There will be
a stage some day to grab
the frozen vomit and make them
see the hot unspoken
signifier. The side of the range.
The compression things
are in cellophane blvds
and the sound of other nail-tappings.


I stood up and unfolded
at an ancient pace of universal cadence

There is a day inside the native plastic.
The wood staircase is reverb 
with guiding stars
golden drano 
and shafts of light;
the shrine to fictional board meetings 
behind every closed door, 
rooms that do not communicate. 
Must we not shine on the office. 
Unreadable billboards to day retrieval.

The moulding is a language they tried 
to hide from points
the ubahn core breaks
at the declarative 
glass house, and face thick beams.
There is always at least a triangle 
to displace azimuth 
from the main window,
taking unimportant mountains,
in their place I-beams, 
the arches and steel parachutes, 
the working world of a singular deal, 
the skycasing project of hilltops 
inverted to cancel valleys. 

Godbuilding is the main job, 
largest consumer of metal. 
next was god-sharing. I asked 
for this hello from where 
I romp and look at the mirror 
too many times, from where 
I knew the green stomach burn 
that felt cold but consumed 
metal coils thru the windows 
called the moon down to open 
the roof, remained a sound 
mural of tomorrow atomized 
grey in the chest.

A man playing violin 
red cone attached, 
they put no eyes on him. 
Another with dulcimer jerked industrious 
consumption 
like a medical manequin. 
These two sounds diode on the platz. 
Something is devotion. 
They were on their feet. 
Filling roles like the coy who ignored them. 
The street demands food and drinks 
without being rude, 
loose and squalid 
as a peacemaker. 
The conductor is ashamed 
because every 
note is a naked parent.

The café was slow, green jazz, 
a candle 
Algeria house cluster 
from a 1960 valley, 
ice cold air over the river. 
The arteries in my eyes 
were abrasive. 
The buildings wasting negative space. 
A deaf gypsy came 
to give me a four-language card 
and heart-shaped keychains. 
I pointed to absinthe to see the beautiful
spoon they bring, 
a house, wings or wormwood.

…anyone wearing sunglasses looks 
arrogant because I can’t 
see their eyes. He laughed 
and I hid my face and looked 
at the ground 
between our feet like a child, 
bored 
grease humming 
on the bare table. 
The ache divinity hides between 
table legs. 

The rain shales and municipal 
brine fill small channels 
on a cobblestone
arcade and bind 
together its fish egg communities. 
The stones are silent by my hand 
(printed to the ground 
so as to not directly gawk), and the tongue finds it not so, 
any fissure able to drain a quivering
mound of what it has.

Then the cold material
is ergonomic as the water had glazed
the belly and brought it
darker than the posterior.
The palms come away sanded and each 
dome push is a magnet flinging 
onward in mosaic fountain. 
The interlocutor will 
eventually be bounded out from the empty
bin and all other bins 
equipped with tube or boulevard, 
as they would say on the economy to show 
the gestalt of soggy 
calamari rings trying 
to flower in the shadow of medieval
cantilevers in the nail-stump pub and döner district.

A cocoon private stationary 
it’s a cargo ship each day 
they remind me, they remind I am a child 
as a mirage the heat bends 
the sky that’s close to the ground, 
they are a caravan trailing off in the distance, striping as a fence, 
dune bound into halves 
a staked-out world of chipping latticework attachable to where 
the shadows are clear lines of a foundry, 
the box animal that can shift
the smoke goes two miles in the distance 
but here only rains ash, 
there is a flock of birds funneling 
around inside a dust devil— 
It throws ash to at least 
me, and farther yet, landscape on all sides, burning exalted, 
compartmentalizing the infinite, 
human stomach never settles. 
Where the sun slips, 
a sky that I recognize as blue 
and beige dagger swipes, 
and the bleeding mango horizon where the docks
end, to the sea behind rocks, 
the sound of wooden shoes across the pier, 
over the god crevice where 
sky and water crush the glimpse of finite days. 
I ran 
back grabbing at hands of saltwater

Spoke with open hands, 
to shift jointed insects and be architect 
preacher, platinum-collar, 
after Xenakis of the already-fallen-over 
and frozen,
after-catastrophy sturdiness,
the death position, and finally useless.
To find fluid location,
ideas of boundaries as inside or outside 
of a circuitry, the distinct parts 
are incubator tanks with an indefinite 
edge, the line at untamed 
wilderness. the emotive post-travel 
account oversaturates with intrication 
and falls asleep on the train

Blowing off dust before laying on red clay, 
steel bricks, aluminum 
bricks, bricks of green tea, bricks 
of concept material 
that can’t crisp in the vision, 
so they are pods. 
And there is music that disassembles, 
an industry that flirts with insight, 
the crushed concept cars, 
the mash litbutter, 
mashes real people. about machine games, 
surgical tubing in knots 
replacing the octopus in the sea. 

The wet caricature in darkness 
opened and collared 
an enormous mushroom of steel and glass 
an avenue lined with portraits 
of young people 
in tall punk hairstyles. 
elders bowing over newborn clairvoyant, 
the center of a glass flower 
held an air of relax body placement. 
could taste in the machinery. 
walked faster and spoke in a fury of two
annihilating activities. 
wanted to let become, 
engulfed intoxication of finding, 
but cranked out noise 
from memorizing all detail of a place 
that will be seen once.  
on the fountain and terribly, stuffed 
angels low around the crown. 

Azure wood and gardens heavywet 
saturated in historically metal
overcast, neon foliage from adjust
light and wavelength. Dew-weeping 
closed a tunnel above the train, 
treething around immaculate 
tracks, the train rush under skin 
of a countryside jugular, 
sustained in the parentheses of the earth.
satellites of Mother Soft Consonant. 
Language places two arenas where one is frail.