Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE NEWS FROM THE WORLD, by GEORGE EKLUND


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE NEWS FROM THE WORLD, by                    
First Line: From the sunlit room the body pulls air
Subject(s): News


From the sunlit room the body pulls air
into the terrible dream of itself,
the dream it carries, unstoppable,
muted only in light.
The blood chill of the self
held in the dumb pulse of the planet.

The hands become difficult to warm
though the mind is filled
with a confluence of fires.
Burning insects rising from the snow.
Fighting off a swarm with my cold hands,
the shadows of gloves and trees
consume the little flags I'd left behind
to mark the spots where I might be found.

How did our gods die?
The news from the world is still the same.
Get healthy and invest.
Watch this screen; here we go.
But all I see are burning hornets
rising from the snow.

In the ice storm I parked illegally.
The world wants us to keep going.
But the body is a horror to think and talk about.
This is what happens while waiting
for an infection to clear,
for the removal of scattered beings from the highway.
Electrified jewels of blood, all of us.
Maybe I'll be smashed into if I don't move.
When it comes time to kill a god,
any season will do.

The body a miracle of cracking glass in the cold.
And the news from the world is still the same.
Here we go. Watch this screen.
Get healthy. Your god is dead. Invest.
The hands galactic in the chill of self.
Could we pull the cold out of each other
or smother the fires beneath the skull?
As we wonder, the percussion is taken
from the orchestra, then string by string silenced.
Then the cry from the animal, taken.
The news from the world is relentless
and makes itself correct.

I cannot do the math on this latest collision,
another plane dropped into the ocean.
I cannot do the math on the citizens of the globe.
Protect your god as best you can
even as the blood chills, galactic, spreading itself,
pulling at the nerves of the mouth.
Burning hornets rise from the snow
and the news from the world is still the same,
the dream of the self, exactly.
Invest. Get healthy.

Copyright © George Eklund.






Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net