Sunday, August 16, 2015

The History of the Future


The History of the Future

make the picture in the future
the history of the future
4-line house, 2-line tent

life upon a clown
you are free so what to do
snake, monkey, repurposed lion

without defiance what forms
do you carve?
hemisphere, triangle, slash

if everything needs to be lines
inside or outside the lens
g o g g l e s a r e b l a c k s o

the moon sheds dim light
on an oil rig, water beneath the rig
the toe you unsock & dip in the water

socking & shoeing are not commutative
asylums, with or without crayons
tattoos lasered or faded

home — what is, who wants, why?
how to move forward (backward)
dream space, every place

better you work outside
the beard, the blind
image to word to string of words

flagged down, the baby bird
death is not Zeno’s paradox
point & fledge

to love dreams
is to love knowing you can’t know
precise & absurd

aspens grow between floor tiles
rush back
as if to prove you’re safe

feral runs out, runs back
stops at the median
lopes toward the traffic light

the laminate beam
spans the high ceiling
bored through in three places

purple cabbage straws
tight-coiled quinoa
orange beans

all day, you said,
you walk from window to window
panning for light

water is sound
green & brown shine
white froth & flow

wet is optional
unless you are the river
rock pebbly, like dried-out sponge

make the garden ammonite
omega, hourglass
flowers orange, yellow, red

make light flow from the center
along lines of blossom anatomy
charred by, rimmed with

scepters of hollyhock
rosemary, daylily
succulents, artichoke

cosmos wavers
crisscross laid in pavers
with thyme to flavor soles

let the central chamber
raise a mesh-clad tent
coral snake undulant

the antique shop’s
white window dressing
of rocker, wedding dress, birdcage

a green-gold deposit
crowns your hair — bird gift
alchemy’s prima materia

you found the ceiling
now find the floor, full
& empty are much the same

either you prefer to be elder
or you have no choice
childhood green

rough-barked trees w/
long narrow leaves
spruce, pine, maple, walnut

tattoos articulate crimson
& hard-won blue
cedar, cypress, yew

big-mouth sharks
leap from pools, your dreams
peaceful, collegial

your other half present but evacuated
rowdy dogs & children swarm
the breakage inconsequential

arbitrage, dismissal
spaces moan when you cross them
urban meadow of lupine, of sorrel

accumulate archipelago
red ring rims a spare half moon
one sound, a bird

Sunday, August 9, 2015

A. R. Ammons

A. R. Ammons [The Famous People]

from A. R. Ammons Collected Poems:

Interval

Coming to a pinywoods
       where a stream darted across the path
like a squirrel or frightened blacksnake
I sat down on a sunny hillock
           and leaned back against a pine
and picked up some dry pineneedle bundles from the ground
and tore each bundle apart a needle at a time
    It was not Coulter's pine
    for coulteri is funnier looking
    and not Monterey either
and I thought God must have had Linnaeus in mind
orders of trees correspond so well between them
and I dropped to sleep wondering what design God
had meant the human mind to fit
           and looked up and saw a great bird
warming in the sun high on a pine limb
tearing from his breast golden feathers
    softer than the new gold that
    dropped to the wind one or two
    gently and touched my face
I picked one up and it said
       The world is bright after rain
for rain washes death out of the land and hides it far
beneath the soil and it returns again cleansed with life
           and so all is a circle
and nothing is separable
Look at this noble pine from which you are
almost indistinguishable it is also sensible
       and cries out when it is felled
and so I said are trees blind and is the earth black to them
Oh if trees are blind
           I do not want to be a tree
A wind rising of one in time blowing the feather away
forsaken I woke
and the golden bird had flown away and the sun
had moved the shadows over me so I rose and walked on