Planting Caltrops in the Dawn 

Planting Caltrops in the Dawn 

What have you got
A hole in your head?
Too? Four? Six, eyes
umbrellas shouldn’t just snap, right?

It really oughtta be a crime
Or, it is!
In the true light of the true law
Although it’s unenforced
Haha!
Or, we don’t recognize —
Complex as it is, as it were —
The mechanism
Spread across the scales beyond

Trains slide, trains glide,
We ride along
Uphill and down how
Did such strange customs come about
Through force of course
Customs and costs and invisible dogs
Slinking through the stripped-clean shops
Squandered and squalid
The culture brought to the conclusion
Of its logic
Immanent in each
Ripped out torn up built-in lean-to
Says Diana, at the helm:
The pills, the anesthetic,
They’re the true coins of the realm
The truth of the false value of value
So-called
The polysemous signified
We’ve all been down this road
Enough
Already to know
It’s right down there
In black on the map
But, oh, don’t forget
We’re all comprised of holes
In heads — windows,
Trapdoors, and cave mouths
Agape, asleep, a sloop in a slip
Slips off, floats out

Away from Crete
The Nomos of Minos
The bull head alights right
Down the street
By Bowling Green

Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and adjunct professor. He lives in New York City and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com and on twitter @elliot_sperber