Eric Helms

HARD WON 

Imagine a completely different version 
27,000 feet above zero. 
There I am, a pseudo-Greek statue 
frozen amidst the Death zone. 
I’m trying to tell you something. 
Please continue the search and rescue. 
I am making my debut in a plush pressure suit. 
Blasting my trombone, which sounds 
like an asshole having a stroke. 
Imagine that that can’t be edited out. 
Also, my spit hath frozen to my mouth. 
I need to evacuate. I’ve already dropped 
40 pounds. I’d rather be down 
at the villa, in the arcade, i.e. in outer space 
with a suitcase, eating a plummity plum 
on July 29th, 1891. 
But the Sun hath started to come down 
with the heralds of passing out 
and a guy selling nitrogen. 
I need more oxygen? 
I think I have some. I think I am some. 
I think I am sailing for charm and concision. 
I am aching for this swan to become my wife. 
I am frozen, a completely pseudo-version 
of life, the degenerating type, 
the most bizarre of all equations. 
One who is clear and as abruptly bright 
as an l.e.d light. At any height, any price— 
We shineth like an atom! Even as you become 
conscious that that is a Sherpa, frozen 
at the summit—where one must recount 
the darkest of appetites. 
In what storm, off which side 
of the mountain will I plummet; 
by which painted pumpkin 
will I be found? In chainmail, in the heartiest 
of spells? Breathing fire and ice 
into the most bizarre of equations, 
which does and does not 
behave as a binary notation, 
according to Quantum assumptions.

ONE AUTUMN EVENING AFTER MARK STRAND 

I dropped into an evening party of B-picture personalities 
who, in a perfunctory fashion, were walking through 
the actions of the characters they had never fully become. 

One was pressed against a glass door, and in the attire of a mail 
carrier. Another was holding a bowl of cherries, which he said 
had broken his heart. I tucked a couple into my breast pocket 
and excused myself, just as I watched him touch my mother’s hand. 

Later on, my opinions being confused, I continued to walk 
until I had walked through an entire dance hall, which had 
no roof or walls. The quiet chant of the air in an unstruck 

hour—might have been so much that I woke only in a crimson- 
leather jacket, a bird in my hand. 

How to account for the difference of light that would fall from her blue 
and yellow shoulder? That too—a dream I do not wish to comprehend.