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city of the world
I listen to the
hustle and moans
of the city of the world—
I hear her sleep
and I hear her whispering—
through the rattle of wires
and the ringing of telephones—
new visions of light.
She imagines so many possibilities,
this city,
as she stretches
beneath her dressing gown
from Los Angeles to Singapore
to Delhi to London
to New York to here,
as I feel her pulse
in my own little corner,
my listening post,
my sanctuary and gateway
to the world.
I listen to the
city of the world
dream and work and roar
posted: wednesday, february 6, at 3:23 PM
Regarding a self portrait with seven fingers
the methodical pacing
of the distance runner -
at five o'clock in the afternoon -
ba-dom, ba-dom, ba-dom,
and the paint is reticent
to make the connection
between greens, blues, yellows, and reds. . .
ba-dom, ba-dom, ba-dom.
Christopher Morley said,
"The courage of the poet
is to keep ajar the door
that leads into madness."
but Madness is always there -
never hidden by artificial doors,
only by the eclipse of the self
with self -
ba-dom, ba-dom, ba-dom.
We praise the lunatics deliriously
because they make connections
we are too timid to make -
between ripples on a lake
and the flow of thought
through our brains,
between the changing of the seasons
and the rise and fall
of empires -
ba-dom, ba-dom, ba-dom.
What we fail to appreciate,
as rationalists -
I sit on bleachers
looking on a field
muddied by the thaw of snow -
is that we, as human beings,
are learned rationalists
(not native born) -
ba-dom, ba-dom, ba-dom.
In the window of the painting
there is, isn't there, an homage
to something else -
What Chagall vents -
at five o'clock in the afternoon -
is both frustration and mastery
(what he paints is not what he envisions,
and yet the painting itself
is worth envisioning).
We are taught logic in schools -
if A then B and if B then C
then if A then C -
these syllogisms,
these Cartesian doctrines,
these straight lines
that are somehow curved.
What we blind ourselves to,
ba-dom, ba-dom, ba-dom,
and what poets prize
is that we are natural storytellers
and natural liars,
that we learn best
through metaphor
and that truth
somehow
is what seems right -
Madness
is in how we think -
ba-dom, ba-dom, ba-dom
sometimes
it is the rebirth
of an idea -
at five o'clock in the afternoon -
it is the scream
of the real.
posted: friday, february 1, at 5:30 PM
I did shower today
it's just that I feel
dirty with frustration
and failure
Clean,
things seem
closer to wholeness.
posted: , at 4:40 PM
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