A Zeitgeber Poem by Noah Smits

Flicker from a weak light
Globe spins on a greased hinge
Blizzard in the peak night
lifting to the high fringe
tropopausal kite winds
wearing to the bones, like
tall Shishaldin Cone's white
hem and Brian Haw's fight
calling out the deep sins
cynosure in headlines—
try and take the beats in—
flat land disrupted by a reified zeitgeber:
Inselberg wake-shake
Draupner wave Shiprock
shipwrecked dreck's now celeb-pleb lip-locks
Drop a Chittagong slum aside the parish Hurst
answer: who screams first?
Drop a Sundarbans tract along the Hampshire coast
answer: who gloats most?
why, the same ones relieved
by the Other left alone
(say, Clemencia and we
aren't so different after all—
it's just different kinds of walls)
and Artigas sits alone, just a butt-naked hero in a war-torn home
Buenos Aires barely groans
("poverty secluded and excluded keeps us in our Zone")
we don't want to know
that we're all old men of Hoy:
got hearts of ancient stone
got truth we all avoid
Savitsky wouldn't buy,
Jodorowsky wouldn't film,
D. Tibet wouldn't sing of
the pure essence of our Curse
Hear them now: "It's too perverse."
A sinister house within the Driftless
A center-left senate, cordial but listless
Lots of insidious breaths of oxygen and acceptable greed
A fast Safari, a sultry mistress
A quick respite, a shallow wishlist
I'm never sure just what I'm doing here but I know what I need