White, White Collars

We work in this building and we are hideous

in the fluorescent light, you know our clothes

woke up this morning and swallowed us like jewels

and ride up and down the elevators, filled with us,

turning and returning like the spray of light that goes

around dance-halls among the dancing fools.

My office smells like a theory, but here one weeps

to see the goodness of the world laid bare

and rising with the government on its lips,

the alphabet congealing in the air

around our heads. But in my belly’s flames

someone is dancing, calling me by many names

that are secret and filled with light and rise

and break, and I see my previous lives.

Poems Collected and New: The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations

Millenium General Assembly, Denis Johnson. HarperCollins, 1995.

First Edition. $50.00

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