Jason Biederman

Flashpoint


The smeared faces in photographs
are akin to catatonia
to compulsive disorders
or the stern and damp expressions
of the silenced

Too often we paste our shadows
in obscure places
tucked away neatly
into peripheral vision
a blur inconsistent
and cold as a bullet's fade

Take a picture
and the stopped scene throbs
the shutter closing
then sinking out of sight
washed pale blue by the flash
the image lasts two milliseconds
like a star
burning its way blindly
towards earth.

Observatory Hill

One night
I uncovered you in the darkness.
Far-off, you were swept out of range.
Mostly through the stiff shadows
a murky presence
hints there is something wrong
something vacant, here in the dust
as someone fallen a great length
might deem comforting.

It's tough to gauge distance out here—
you find yourself floating;
too much in the atmosphere
to be of consequence.
You know you won't remember
any of this, even now
before the drift begins,
moving slowly as clogged arteries
in concentric circles,
blind, like hysteria,
only hazier.

We're shifting incongruously now—
two shapes, here or there.
The hint of tragedy that assumes
strange forms; this place
where stars
redeemed me the way
you couldn't.

Tightrope Artist

Riding the bus through town,
on the other side of the glass,
women who were once sculptures
strike poses anyway.
Trapped in cars on the East Coast,
misfits in cowboy hats
pass curbs bumped
one too many times.

It's rush hour.
The friction of familiar routine
rubs everyone the wrong way.
Cars make waves—
yet are too modern to notice.
I wonder if I can swim through
wind, when I spy blocks of paint
on a girder, recalling Rothko.

I'm thinking there's too many
tough guys in this city,
when I remember—
we did it all wrong.
It mostly seems like smoke now;
or simply parcels in crumpled bags.
(There are some things that are
made to be discarded.)

As stoplights blink late
into rote evening,
the overwhelming sense of time
lingers. There's something to
be said for monotony,
that comfortable hierarchy
like Warhol's cinema slowly
playing itself out.