Dog Whistles

• Dog Whistles

Dog Whistles

The news is full of dog whistlers
Have I not heard the news?
Incanting sweet sweet nothings
In waves of royal blue

How soon the ears turn to callus
And the eyes forget to cry
How soon the days all taste alike
Cut round and wafer-dry

The hills are alive with dog whistles
Over gardens turned and tame
Over rooftops brown and sprawled away
Like armadillo scales

How soon the feet forget the dance
How quick the hands the tune
How soon the bread all tastes alike
All sliced from the same stone

I knew a man in a desert place
Beard like the mangrove trees
And my head still rings in the dark
With the things he never said to me

The news is full of dog whistlers
Have I not heard them say?
In my car immune to beating sun
And that icy driven rain

How soon the heart can wither
To a varnished metronome
How quick the signs all look the same
When all roads lead to home

© Brendan Bonsack
January 2015

1. Dog Whistles
2. This was the Place
3. Which Pocket?
4. Be There
5. What Kind of Yes?
6. The Historian
7. August Afternoon
8. Shells
9. Out of the Pines
10. Places for Falling

What Kind of Yes?
Released January 2015