Improv Entries Week 7

Entry 1:
From Sandra Meek's The Mechanics of Failure

"Mostly/ there is no warning: planes slam/ into buildings, or you do your own/ crash and burn, lighting life down/ to a finger of ash."

Crash and burn, another failed earth science
test, an absurd subject, mr. lewis, the preacher
of practiced lies from the purple book and i don't believe anything
he or the damn purple book say and instead a latin mantra,
not the way tree bark grows or what is under my feet, sticks
like glitter to cracks in the floor boards, it's what cauks
the cracks in my gray matter: Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
And then, and by then I mean now, a second home to accidental heroes
used to unclean manhattan air, used to chaos but not disaster,
fall like jenga pieces to a ground now known as zero,
the number you can't count, the number after 6 in red
on the chapter 2 test i got back five minutes before
on dirt or some shit i can't remember. but i remember
feeling zero, not knowing what to do, rumors already spreading
tainted words, disfigured mutations like gohnorrea of truth,
wrong and unapologetic, curable on some level if you could
just track down the source and the girl across from me pulls
a Bible from her back pack, begins reading Revelations, out loud,
and I thought about the only verse I know, written in black children's font
on the linen i lay my head on at night, pictures in some places, a cup
for cup, grass for green pastures, a sun for days
before i knew what a psalm was.
When they ask me, when i'm old, where I was when the buildings fell,
what I did when I saw 110 tumble down into zero, I'll tell 'em.
I was in seventh grade science class, praying to a pillowcase.

Entry 2: From Sandra Meek's Couratijn River
"Such perfect balance, such/ perfect revolution: the eldest son lights/ the pyre, the old man burns on shore."

The eldest son lights a cigarillo with a match
by the bridge we all jump from summer after summer
into shallow water of an oh-fuck temperature, into clarity:
nothing matters. My hair was purple then and his chest
was covered in brown hair, finally, but before all the others,
my brother in crime and Jesus. His old man burned
when he got home, smelled smoke in his blonde hair,
gave him hell and a mark like a red lotus bloomed
under his skin by his eye. But nothing mattered
but us, us fived tied like old rope to heartwood,
a perfect balance of knowing nothing and taking
everything, tattered shorts and heartstrings
on fire, burning up the little bit of sand
left in the bottle. And just like it came, it went.
That was the summer i fell in love with everyone
and my harmonica, when we sang songs behind the Shyre
and on trampolines, left imprints of backside
in waffle house booths and he told me in whiskey scented words
i am not inside your head. i am your head. and we're going nowhere
slow as we got there.