The Lincoln, NE Machine

& to a grove of trees    trees too small to be people    it’s the real thing to capture chemicals & cancer.  A lifetime in Nebraska stores part of Nebraska in shallow groundwater & contaminated technology.  Trees plant trees because other trees expect doubt to sustain the land.  But they lost a good thing    an official community. & some trees use signs to study Nebraska.    An unusual thing to expose to air.

I mark the time by towns. Between Whitman & that slow sea of middle America    my young man straps into some summer way west.  My baby & I do it geological.  I watch towns crumble.  Secrets claim to know empty suitcases     daydreams & volcanoes.  A window wanders & disappears. Maybe heads west.  Maybe thinks of space. We eventually disappear into the boy who sleeps Nebraska.

Different things show up in my catalogue      for example     a pumpkin tree saying I inch along the veins of encyclopedias      a bean pod reading Nebraska’s shallow soil & the drainage of native color     which my catalogue tells me I have eaten.  It is a small color. Or soil falling over winter     compost in a violet smoking jacket     & slender colors pulling Lincoln into black winter light.

*

I have eaten Lincoln.  He is a small color. Or maybe little towns fall along winter when daydreams detach from violence.  Or maybe slender windows wander into the colors of my head.  Or maybe volcanoes west of Nebraska are empty.  Or maybe the space between Whitman & the shallow soil of middle America slips into the pumpkin jacket while my baby smokes a bean pod.

My catalogue disappears into winter light.  Or maybe soil crumbles into black summer towns.   Or maybe a young man reads about the slow drainage from my catalogue & tells me the native sea sleeps with boys     which I haven’t noticed.  Or maybe I show suitcases the time by marking them with geology.  Or maybe Nebraska disappears out west & gets pulled up by inches.

Moving pipes is his family’s call     but day & night     water drives their pickup into cornfields that control the system.  An idea puts water into water & technology monitors technology.  But how much water shuts off a computer? & if a machine rains on a system    can the speed of an idea determine the culture of groundwater    while faster fields introduce waste to farmers?

Purple is plentiful in these days of chemical reactions.  Or memory functions as a color you experiment within.  A handful of America found the battle against purple helpful     they sliced people from love     & baked them in an oven.  Or consider night shades as a homemade repertoire of color while the body thinks for purple & eats alone during summer months.

*

A machine functions as color but thinks of America as a handful of purple & memory.  How a computer eats summer determines the speed of the living.  Bake a body in water.  Computerize cornfields.  Gauge purple with the technology of homemade systems. & when alone     put an idea into a culture of waste & find out how water drives shade into moving fields of color.

Chemical reactions of purple program an idea into groundwater & introduce experimentation into a family’s system of love.  At night     water asks farmers made from a machine to slice people into purple & shut them in an oven.  Eat them alone.  This repertoire of night tricks you into a living body.  & monitors control water pipes much more than water controls technology.

Becoming must be small for people     if the land is to sustain trees. America is the gap between machinery & a community of trees     a reduction in signs & the technology of air     a waste of land & an expected loss.  Metallic air dissipates      captures the Other in Nebraska & contaminates it with ash.  Trees must fill the air with toxins if chemicals are to recycle death. & Nebraska must store part of it in the land.

The empty sea tells me that middle America catalogues my disappearance with encyclopedic knowledge.  Maybe it’s because Nebraska thinks time is safer if I am eaten by space. & daydreams of pumpkins drain sleep from a boy’s head.  Violence in tree-light     volcanoes in a window       my winter veins made of suitcases.  This catalogue is Whitman made of color       made of the slow drainage pulled up from the ground.

An American corn machine slices people into purple & bakes their bodies into computer programs.  The water-system monitors    water the waste-system monitors waste      the night-system monitors night    & technology speeds the living toward faster versions of love: chemical reactions in water: an experiment in ideas.  A homemade body programs memories inside an oven & eats them alone.