fictions, speculative dreams, and meditations
Three notes all it took
They knew they knew the tune
And skipped on by
They’re skippers or seekers
Searching for the unrecognized
The never heard
I’ve heard your notes
But never learned them
I rehearsed and I sang along
And I didn’t skip on by
The song is only a trickle now
I’m guarding it with my life
Like the last tributary
Of a once great river
Ran dry from drought and misuse
You are wind chimes and crickets
And leaves crunching underfoot
He presented himself as
Virginia Justice, American,
Red, White, and Blue.
The Monk asked if he’d been in government in his day.
“I ain’t ever been involved in government.”
The Monk checked the blowhard, shoving him aside.
small so small
infinitely small
non-existent
so small I don’t exist
even within my own species
my own hemisphere
or nation or region
Chastisement comes to us from the Greek,
just kidding it’s from Old French,
and before that Latin.
And you can follow it back to PIE and beyond—
To the first poet to utter a sound, and beyond—
From since there’s been vocal cords,
or rattles,
or hairy legs,
there has been chastisement,
and poets do it the best.
Balancing the needs
of the artist with
the needs of the man
is a hard thing to do
beginning with it’s the man
writing this because the
artist is dead immobil-
ized at least, feels
permanent, tormented
and unable too,
but in there somewhere
is the eye, the last piece
of the artist recomending
linebreaks and howling
over word choice
and worrying about how
this will ever be digitilized
ones and zeros motherfuckers
it’s impossible he shouts
his last words and dies
back again as I’m saying balance is a pitiful word for what
I want to describe:
a fulcrum 75% along a beam
with the needs of the artist at the short end
