Poetry | Short Fiction | Creative Nonfiction
Words mean what I seem to think
So I insist that’s what they mean
And I seem to think that you think you know
Upon which page we think we’ve been
By turns we’ve come to disagree
At what is true and what is scheme
Now don’t let’s come to blows my friend
We’re likely in some pedant’s dream
more and more I am less and less
loss and increase, rushing the doors
each by the other’s entrance
a deluded equilibrium sprayed
through the stencil of things known to be
cash or credit, movement or dead still
path with mantra, a mass with a host
mastery of the enclosing nesting doll
in preverbal childhood, before a self
got on to it, on a blanket in the yard
you pointed and said “da” in wonder
it could have been anything
now I wonder why we can’t leave
wonder alone, and when we point and
open our mouths, out comes
a meaning, a stillborn concoction
landing with a thud
-:-
Myself, 1955, aged eight months.
Under a spooning dome of swollen sky, they gather in swirling kettles. They never know where to look until a vision taunts them. They hesitate. The light of the sky waiting for its own green signal. Then they shine. How do they know to be so quiet?
The red things reflect the reds. The rest of the spectrum disappears into all the red things. Now everything is bathed in light. Rainbows crammed into the suitcases of every wave, every particle. The neurotic, misty light searches everywhere, looking for shadows to expose. It is constant. Seeing makes it confess to this persecution of the dark.
If it could only shine inside one, for a while, then we could see them too. The shadows. We could see within them. What on earth could be found in such a place? Light thinks it’s the only thing that matters. But without it we could not see fit to argue. Are we shadows, then?
a fly landed on my screen
and I reflexively tried to click on it
but it flew away, up and over the horizon
to newly discovered lands, resplendent
verdant places labeled with exotic
names cribbed from the antediluvian
aboriginals, and over time, saddled
with strange new meanings
Poets stringing words together
in the intestinal casings of
their pet language.
Sausage makers! Frauds!
The flower’s poem fell
under the croaking lawnmower
of a babbling poet.
Gone!
orbituary: n. the official announcement
when a satellite looses orbital inertia,
and plunges back to the planet’s surface.
see: obituary, orbit
a truly original work
would not be recognized as art
and language cannot begin to function
without tapping the manifold intents
of its every instance
from the first lowbrow grunt
to the last ephemeral buzzword
creation implies something springing from nothing
a nonstarter, a hat trick beyond
the scope of even a heavenly godcraft
The stupider it looks, the more important it probably is.
—J. R. “Bob” Dobbs
hypnotic slurry of brilliance and
stupidity, compassion and acute heartlessness
and endless demagoguery
these ancient cave paintings
these wartime leaflets
these political campaigns
this social network
this us, this me
a shirt button strikes carpet
like a mouse tapping a conch shell
with a pine needle
the button threads dangle
in the happy memories of their
tightly crossed youth
when the air moves slowly
we don’t call it wind
and tree leaves abandon their chatter
the crunch of gravel beneath tires
falsely accuses silence of a mischief
that no one cares to name
the language takes its glory
in noise making, and tangles us
in an infinite knot of meanings
but silence knows no mischief
and so we busy ourselves
with gossip about its secrets
