People sometimes tell me
they have trouble understanding poetry.
That's because they consume it
as they would a banana,
starting at one end and chomping
down to the other.
Poetry has to be consumed like
corn on the cob.
One should start at one end
and work down to the other,
but then one has to
go back to the beginning --
change one's angle of perspective --
and - again - go from one end to the other.
I can't
emphasize
this point about changing
one's angle of perspective
enough.
There is a difference:
with corn on the cob, one rotates the corn,
but, with poetry, one has to rotate something
within the reader.
Otherwise, one is just chomping into
an empty rut -
a track devoid of sustenance.
Then, one has to repeat the process
until every last morsel has been consumed.
That's how one ingests poetry.
Human nature is a raging river
which a few shitty sandbags of common sense
will not detour.
Some people stand on the bank
and shout at the river.
I will admit, I've done the same.
But those words neither soak in
nor bounce off that raging river --
they're made silent,
dying in air.
Some people try to steer
the river by splashing at the lapping waters
near its edge,
But none of them is Moses,
not one can dam a river by force of will.
And - even if one could --
eventually, that person would have to let go,
leaving a backed up and angry river
to rage onward.
One burning moment --
taffy-stretched to the edge of reason:
stretched so broadly that one
can't fathom escape -
like Monkey on the Buddha's palm
One burning idea --
cloned, and then carved
to make infinite variants,
and painted infinite shades:
the dark tone of each
darker than the last
Burning ideas populating
the vast expanse of a
burning moment,
until the urge to escape
insists that one carve a hatch
into living tissue
But what is it that does
the stretching of the burning moment
&
the cloning of the burning idea?
Can't that stretcher and cloner
be wound back,
scaling all to proper proportions?
And can't it be done before
that terminal instant
is carved in jagged stone?
I
A young man set his ex-fiancé on fire.
(Or, so the story goes.
[He claims she self-immolated.])
She succumbed to third-degree burns...
but not right away.
She lived long enough to know
the agony of third-degree burns.
They'd met in college,
both studying to be engineers --
I mention that because
at the heart of the issue was caste.
It seems absurd enough
to murder a fiancé over
some imaginary mark of superiority,
but even more so when one considers
that they would have had the same qualification --
possibly similar jobs --
but for the boy's bigoted parents,
who insisted he call off the engagement,
and the boy, himself,
who took things that extra murderous mile.
So, it wasn't even about who the couple were,
it was about what their grandfathers
did for a living.
What a world.
II
The war is still burning.
Among the latest questions are:
Will Belarus be forced to join in the fighting?
&
If so, will having another set
of soldiers who are completely uninterested in the war --
other than as a trial to be survived, that is --
help or hurt Putin's position?
A related question is whether Putin
would rather watch the world burn
than to lose face?
What a world.
III
The Pandemic said, "Psyche!"
This means America will roll the odometer
on COVID deaths.
We had things almost back to normal,
and then the virus caught its breath,
got it's footing,...
whatever viruses do.
What a world.
***
I think I'll check the news, again,
maybe sometime next year.
The Midnight Circus
was not as it seemed.
It was bright colors:
motion-blurred.
It was the tinny monotony
of music box-style
tinkling tunes
&
organ tones.
One could even make
out the scent of fried foods
and cotton candy,
among the many other
[uncircus-like]
odors.
But there was also the story
a mind wrote to
dance sensory facts
into sensory fictions;
that was where the falsity lie.
If one opened one's eyes,
letting them focus:
there'd be sparking wires,
&
flames licking ever closer.
The shrill organ tones would
become screams.
The summer night's
humid heat would become
third degree burns.
The circus smells would
become dust and death
and acrid burnt combustibles.
So, he didn't open his eyes
to war or his impending demise,
but let his mind march
into that big musty, canvas tent,
surrendering to its irreality.
Running through the park,
in the light of the rising sun,
I pass through a band of cool air,
and a little later,
pass through a band
of warm, humid air.
And, I wonder whether
I'm having a stroke.
Isn't physics supposed
to push the warm air over
into the cold,
or pull the cold air over
into the warm,
or both,
and to keep doing so until
the air temperature
is an undifferentiated mass?
Had I stumbled into a
glitch in the Matrix?
Was the simulated weather
breaking down?
Why was thermodynamics
misbehaving?
I had so many questions,
but so few answers.
And so many miles to go.
One item per day
was abandoned
until living got hard.
But like Diogenes --
who gave up his cup
upon seeing a boy
slurping from cupped palms --
eventually, it all was gone.
Each item hand-weighed,
its weight against is usefulness,
and all were found expendable.
They told it slant,
but not all the truth,
and it rolled into the ears
of the willing
and into the minds
of the faithful.
And in those minds
it was built into
a swift machine,
one of great power --
if little reality.
But deaths never required
reality of motive,
only
reality of matter.
So, the wild stories
became wild ideas
that were the bane
of us all.
“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible”
Henry david thoreau, Walden
Too many people wish that the world consisted
of those who held the same views as they -
who loved what they loved,
who believed what they believed,
who would do what they would do.
I can't imagine a more boring world than that.
If there aren't those with different:
ideas,
desires,
beliefs,
and values,
then who will show me something new:
something that -- for good or for ill --
will change my world
and advance my understanding.
If truth be told,
I'd just as soon spend time
among the crazy sages who --
having rejected all programming --
will not be made prisoner to a train schedule,
let alone to a norm or convention or protocol.
The madmen who shaman one
out of all mental conventions.
But such as they are hand forged,
each vibrating at his or her own wavelength --
hard to see and
not easily found.
The secret is...
we're energy machines.
This wild ride we're on is all about
staying 98.6.
The meaning of life
might as well be 98.6.
You work to make rent
to be sheltered at 98.6.
You go to the store for groceries
to stoke the fires of 98.6.
You put on your coat or slippers
to keep yourself at 98.6.
You go to the beach
to warm to 98.6
&
then sweat to drop
back to 98.6.
You take medicines when you're too
far off the mark of 98.6.
You turn on the AC
to sleep at 98.6
&
kick off the covers
&
drag the covers back
&
adjust the AC...
all to sleep at 98.6.
You may wish to be a flash fire
of a million degrees,
but life leaves you at 98.6.
Some day you'll cool off
and your career as
Thermoregulatory Maintenance
Specialist
will be at an end
&
you'll be done with
the trouble of staying 98.6.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 