Aristotle’s Romantics
Shattered porcelain
like unburied artifacts
look like clouds on a hardwood sky.
She broke it, she is broken.
Standing by the dishwasher
her fingers between teeth
to prevent tears.
The curls of her black hair
bounce in the rhythm of her tapping foot.
A treatise could be written about her stance,
a theory constructed out of her clothes,
she feels the tension she has on her self.
Somewhere beneath strained breathing
she is porcelain ready to break.
The setting sun behind her
represents change, renewal, and hope.
Flooding through the kitchen window
it casts her into a shadow on the floor.
It isn’t until I draw close that I feel her heat,
see the blood on her olive skin,
until I discover the cause.
My fingers on her chin give a new trajectory -
her eyes no longer on the floor.
She laughs while waving a dish towel in surrender.
That little porcelain plate was more than it appeared to me.
It was children yet unborn, it was bills yet unpaid,
it was first love, it was heart break,
it was the collected poems of our life together,
it was life unburied.
Stockholm Syndrom
Inspiration is back
to steal and reveal
I hope my hands don’t fail my eyes
or the heart they inform
because the brain they conceal
Doesn’t trust our conclusions.
It can’t know what they know.
First Impressions are back.
familiar things are new
as if more real than real
words made material
A girl’s hair, the wind, a moving car,
A symbol, a sign, a detour
they’re being metaphorical.
Imagination is back
like lemonade on a summer day
quenching but conditional
sweet before sour.
Its always eventually sour
like a last kiss
(that’s the one they never talk about).
Impersonations are back
trade one face for another
because nothing is really new.
Besides which it’s easy,
and unavoidable.
Was I supposed to believe
I’m the only one she talks to?
Temptation is back
to call me a king or prophet
to offer me alchemy for ink
gold for words
greatness for loneliness
exile to paradise.
The devil has inspiration too.
Inspiration is back
the called lover in chains
welcomes the captivity
for a change of pace
there is a tenderness in her embrace
despite its inescapability.
Love devouring. Love devoured.
A Fish Would Not Feel Wet
No footprints, no roads, and no straight lines.
A clear glass world – no windows no doors.
What metaphor could reach a goldfish
what story about travel could pull his soul.
Does he feel the devil in his watery world
as he plays their passions like a lute
or do they just swim in circles knowing
neither whim nor will?
Does tragedy reach a goldfish
does time stand still. Does he know
the plight of his people abroad?
Does he feel the confines of the bowl?
I watch and nod. Wondering
what makes a goldfish whole.
There is flight underwater
unimaginable, indefinable, caged flight
and in that fantastic, freeing movement
there is something small, a floor to put
your castle on, an entrance and an exit,
a golden scale bikini, a miscellaneous shimmer,
a God.
Our Myth Part I
The unfortunate truth for those who hide themselves behind ration relativism is that what they are really looking for is justification, for ethical orders, for a completely irrefutable fact amidst a sea of turmoil – they are looking for truth. Oh sure, like the sophist they can speak around this issue but they cannot hide forever. They use the metaphysical nature of words against it. They turn her and make her cut her own arm off. They say she is limited because she speaks above the reality of the senses and then timestamp her body with the word “philosophy”. The one-handed, ravaged, dirty language of man is no longer something within herself she is nothing higher than a whore being used by every self-defined genius who aims to be novel by undermining all previous assumptions. They push her around a circle of bloated, unshaven, brutal men each taking there turn at removing her garments; imagery, metaphor, meter, rhyme, symbolism, and finally the jewel of her navel: poetry. They condemn her by calling her a liar, and justifying every vicious act they perpetrate on her with envious and insidious logic. Her once mirror-like eyes are too dirty to reflect the ugly faces of the darkened madmen who now parade her naked body through the streets calling themselves by the names of forgotten deities.
A boy sees her from the windows of his family’s house. He blushes and weeps for shame. In the innocence of his childhood he still knows to avert his eyes. But does he know to fight back? He blindly screams out the window to the crowd but their chanting is too loud. They carry her past the boy who never sees her go and to the church where they force her to stare at her shadow.
Belle Noir
Iris MacDuffin, a peacock butterfly,
with eyes like cigarette burns
which reflect her chiaroscuro -
the complimentary schism that
divides her, was so much
more than a white whale.
Though often her pale skin
made her a shadow’s double walker,
like some gothic non-being
or even worse a once-was.
Of all the places for her to come,
why she walked into mine I’ll never know.
She spoke only in sepia tones
about bland pre-Kodak recollections
tainted like artifacts too long buried,
which had no point, nor narrative,
just the bland presentation of facts.
Yet still, not without complications, an attraction,
a deliverance – something unusually mundane
yet shockingly poignant -
Like a pointed absurdity. Or a machine
with a woman’s soul inside it.
Those eyes – with the thin crisp
outline of color curling around
a massive dark planet – they darted without ceasing.
They were revisionist siphons – utterly blank
so that they could take things anew and recreate.
Her body was never too far behind her eyes
following around the room, dragging a finger
across the dust. She moved neither fast nor slow;
neither graceful nor clumsy; but oddly
like a film shot at 22fps.
Everything about her was unnatural,
an observation that made her laugh
since she had come to realize that man
could be nothing other than unnatural
unless he finally gave in to his bestial lychanthropy
howling at the moon like some lunatic Spartan.
It was this notion that made her so cold
for even love was just an unnatural passion
that came from outside us to sweep
us out of sepia toned history
and into the colors of the present.
This is why she could not have been my holy grail,
for she never existed outside her own mind
in any real way. She was her own windmill
untouchable and surreal whose being was utterly imaginary.
Despite my desire to have her
she escaped through clenched fingertips.
The night she died, some years later,
I read the entirety of Hamlet aloud
alone in the study we had once gathered in,
as if she were there. Words, slander, more words.
He finally made sense. She finally made sense.
I, however, never changed. I still desired her
despite never being able to love her.
Said the Explorer -
“I do not forget the ill affects of such mistakes
I merely let my brain filter out Aztec pitfalls and much
of the year spent with malaria. You see a life is not spent in history
it forsakes plain facts in favor of context and narrative.
The mind makes pilfering into excavation using
the same justification as a priest at an alter;
a still beating heart aloft in his hand. Call it profane
if you must but do not assume you do not do the same
when you lie to your children. At least my adventures are heroic
and their name will spread as fast as its mystery -
that is to say, at least I tell the world my lies.”
to put on or take off. History is neither fact nor narrative
but pedigree and convenience. Lies are only vicious when there is a truth
no matter how you justify. It is a pity that your genius
was so exaggerated. You may know much of nature but nothing of man.
I attribute much of your errors on the misfortune you had
being entrenched in ancient texts devoid of recent advancements.”
Don’t we share things with those ancients -
We’re nothing but clay – free to take shape, no two the same
Dissimilarities can be found among all things
“Do not try to assert yourself as an expert on people because you have
examined the affect they’ve had. Have you explored the brain
have you number the electrons, followed the neurons, and surveyed
the remains of a man long dead. Have you divined how to detect
the quantity and quality of man? Then do not tell me how to weigh
genus, species, and family because they are nothing but convention -
words that would cease to exist if we did so also.”
then we cannot have this discussion. Toward what end
would we continue to pontificate if tomorrow
if we all died and took our words with us.
Such an absurd thoughts brings only sorrow
to anyone with children. What cause would bring
you to this hell? That you would sooner remove
the power of your tongue then admit
to something beyond you – whether the thread of history
the endless grace, timeless nature, or the promise of words?
Why do you even speak? Why offer such grief to those
of us who respect words enough to use them with responsibility
rather than selfish charity – giving away only that which
you wouldn’t keep in your own home.”
to seek the true shape of things.
Then to emerge with it in hand to send to all too weak of mind
to discover the same.
Call it the burden to knock down the wall. Doing
so ensures that our progression from apes was not for nothing.
We have emerged to tare the heavens down and finally unveil
reality for what it is -
a sham the scale of which astounds me
even as I prepare for bed each night. For even in the midst
of my deepest mind the universe still tricks me into thinking
that something is out there.
That my bed is soft, that my wife is happy,
that my children enjoyed that bedtime story.
Such experience doesn’t belong to me no matter
how many times I recall them.
Despite my longing for them to be true.
Memories are just useful fictions to
allow for sleep at night.”
and my refusal to forget them? Why do you
care if I fabricate some details for the sake
of a good story – if all are untrue?”
We are all in this despair together
and what would we be if we didn’t lend
a hand to those less fortunate than us.
Besides I can’t have you spreading such lies
around impressionable children. Heaven forbid
my own children would fall for such a line. I would
further discuss this matter, but we’re out of time.
Perhaps we can continue this later over prime rib and some wine
I know this secluded place down by the docks
perfect for such discussions.
Perhaps I could catch you coming in from another adventure.
Until then, dear explorer, do not forget what I have told you today,
it might serve you well.”
When she asked me, I thought of English Class
The poet used to have to be sad
because tragedy was harder to write in those days
the days of dusty old history books.
Life, at that point, was just as hard but still whimsical
to look upon something with despair took talent
because even amidst sickness, death, and plague
there was an air of mysticism.
The poet always liked a challenge.
Hence my daughter asks:
“why are poets always sad?”
It is not for any reason other than ease today
In the gray wrinkled newspaper world.
It is foolish to write about happiness, of love, of hope
for we are the children of despair
and the poet is our mouth.
The poet abhores others, for he sees only half-people,
He writes only about himself, for himself.
But still I answer her:
“They must be seeing something you and I don’t”.
Reflections on a Silverback Guerrilla
He says humanity but means apes
lucky enough to understand their misery.
Resolve to evolve
Find the courage to leave the cave
and become the servant to your liberty.
Why did you ever leave?
Our neediness checked our ambition
but now we have more than we need.
A revolution against evolution.
Power inherited through our tradition
has turned survival into greed.
Is that so hard to believe?
He says that love is a chemical illusion
from the barrel of a gun.
Evolve her revolver
She prefers romance to evolution;
the moon over the sun.
Do you think she’s deceived?
Heaven, for him, is a benevolent lie
Well-meaning but ultimately wrong
Resolve to be solved
All to see is nothing, when you die
all but darkness is gone.
Am I supposed to be relieved?
He likes his technology, not realizing it makes him weak.
They demand his constant attention.
Evolve and dissolve
Plug yourself in, and see what you seek
the newest level of ascension.
Do you like what you’ve received?
Meanwhile his cousin waits in the zoo
passing messages with the sings they learn
An institution of revolution
They wait for the fall of man to be through
They’ve got a civilization to burn.
Our destruction will not be grieved.
To Give a Name (An Ode to my Unborn Son)
It’s 3 a.m. and I hear my unborn child cry
on the shrink wrapped baby monitor
looming over a cup and a tea bag sucked dry.
A half opened book lays on its spine,
A book on SIDS too frightening for such an hour
A nightmare too real for my mind.
The book in my hands; a book on baby names
Is opened to “D”, who knows what for,
Because one decision still remains;
Will he be strong, or smart, or kind
With mathematics or philosophy
Written as poetic line,
Running through his heart, or in his veins
in his eyes or in his mind
and will his name be a highlight, or a stain?
Will it be apt or prophetic
will it define him before he’s born,
Both meaningful and aesthetic?
When he says it will their pride,
Or shame in his eye
when he asks a girl to be his bride,
To take his name, to take our name?
Will he be chastised
For its lack of fame?
On my death bed will he say:
“Its all your fault,
My life turned out this way”?
More importantly will he be right?
Is his fate in my weak hands,
Cradling his name tight,
At such late hours of the night.
While Driving Home I Whitnessed a Crash.
Snow is pure but it is cold
and it falls.
Its not like us, its new and its old,
Its not like us at all.
It doesn’t mind being in a whole
it gives it power
to stop being a flake and assume control
with an avalanche.
No single one can take credit for the squall
so they are innocent.
Snow isn’t like us at all
it isn’t cognoscente
it doesn’t know the difference
between chosen and natural.
When it falls it doesn’t feel the wind
it doesn’t think freedom is vital
nor being questionable,
nor time passable,
nor nature unknowable,
It doesn’t wonder about the immortality of the soul
it doesn’t despair over its fall
it is pure white but very cold
No, snow isn’t like us at all.
