. . . break upon these rocks jagged and sharp like fangs as if I or we or you stood upon some cliff waves worrying the shore instead of here surrounded by students or books or business associates anticipating a sale or nervous passengers on the plane thinking about anything but the inevitable rise and landing a metaphor a word rough scratches on stone broken chips of terracotta some transformation into something more profound more meaningful because it is not what lies on the surface it lies and lies faster with more urgency ingenuity than politicos caught in lies deeper past the viscera embedded on the ubiquitous the cloying the fur a tang an alum over across the atoms the mesons pisons neurons dendrites phonemes morphemes genomes my word vertigo hand flies to forehead in a stock romantic gesture then back upon the cliff dizzy sea breeze catches my voices dispersing like mist into the infinite sky senseless again a departure from here and the coughing whispers air-conditioned noise adolescent brains breaking on words stones clack on tiles other voices slip through the game’s maze tell me a story love adventure heroics beyond this room this school this suburb this country this page safely filtered through bowdlerized texts minds afraid to speak close to any belief cowed by bludgeons of ignorance into ignorance like rocks pounding rocks a pulverizing tattoo to mark the earth mar the ear with safe metaphor we hold these truths without thought without reason with reason and thought false constructs follies fabricated to form a significance from air blow wind smoke sinuous rises from beneath trees resists momentarily hanging above the cliff then forms itself to the wind and lets go. . .
(from Primogenitive Folly, August 2001-April 2003)
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