a poem about beards (I highly approve)

HAIR TODAY

for Jeff Hawkins

I.
I am a wild one

I razed the hairs of my wild face
mailed them

each to someone different
in the phone book

there is a beard that is a river of mail
moving through the streets

feline as night
and the smoothfaced stars

II.
the stars are holes in the receiver of night
listen:

the hairs of the infinite
the godbeard of night
shaking out its owls and dark angels
its evening calls to loved ones
and death

III.
an emergency

the dental work
the moon shapes
the lichen
the shopping carts
the Zohar of the beard

the armchairs
the stamp collection
the surround sound of the beard

the scared text
the Fujiyama
the giant face of bees

the earth's trees
and mailboxes
its razorblade of stars and cochlea
its mail carriers
its undertow
is urgent
the hairs of the beard

an emergence

IV.
a crank call like a razor
whirring, breathing, scratching

"if you're so wild
why answer the phone?"

a shadow moving through the shorn city
5 o'clock ellipses
7 o'clock commas
not words but
a thousand ant stigmata
crawling across the sky

V.
each hair in an envelope falling
through the mailslot
a shadow inside a dove

the beard only possible
an agreement
between strangers

a rhizomatic face
cramming our brains with hair

VI.
we take our beard
a consensus of night
feed it into an ATM
we withdraw stars
or perhaps

wait for help

—Gary Barwin

[taken from Grain Vol 38.4, Summer 2011]