1- Where Lunatics Eat Artificial Orchids
I have never been to a lunatic zoo
but I know these animals are sick.
You will see many dead animals
and people eating them
but the animals they eat are not “natural”
and I know these animals are sick.
“They were starved to death”
whispers the policeman protecting the bank.
“Left for dead and animals eat those left behind.
The discarded.”
They do not know what to do with all the dead animals.
I imagine how they feel
eating all these dead animals
especially having to eat them once again
after eating so many of them before
when they return\to be eaten once more.
Things keep coming up.
Things keep going down.
The animals in that distant and dark corner are not sick
but the zookeepers don’t take caution with their pain
and kill them with their steel rods and with their oven gloves.
Why?
To scare the sicker animals away from humans
into the forest and away from the children
into the attic
also saving the zoo’s finances
because it is about to be declared a public shame.
Yet… If we want to go on a picnic we can buy a picnic basket in every distant and dark corner.
All natural items
such as the vegetables the animals used to live on
nuts the animals used to eat raw from the ground
dried berries
biscuits from the hands of strangers
then at the very beginning
one animal died and was eaten
although every animal said
they could not eat anymore.
The animal realizes they must store
all its own food in the distant and dark corner.
A few plants however may need fresh air
and while most of our pets
even the sharks
will die of starvation
if given only parrots to eat
the snakes in the kitchen
and the amphibians approaching the writing desk
in the distant and dark corner
give solemn thanks for sleep.
There is evidence some animals will recover
from being eaten.
A 1943 study suggests people eat artificial orchids
(orchids artificially forced to reject their essence)
which contain beautiful toxins
sweet as blood in which fish swim.
Toxins are also in plants animals fungi and human cells
and lingered over in the researchable wild
cause withering anemia in domestic arrangements.
Handsome scientists developed an experiment
with five orchid specimens taken from around the world
and each of these five real orchids were fed fresh artificial orchids.
Additionally the insects in the five wild specimens were treated
with various levels of toxicity and turned loose on the petals.
One, a single sample from the five specimens
contained no toxins whatsoever.
Another from the smallest group of four (a single “natural’ orchid
containing all the chemicals of a natural orchid)
contained 100% toxins.
One group of 12 organic samples
contained only 10% toxins.
And all tasted sweet as the blood
in which fishes swam.
(To be noted: the same number of organic samples were taken from four different orchid species.)
2- The Creature
for Mary Shelley
In respect to so little solitude
each beloved’s off-hand proposal
finger curls a hair of sutured shadow
a half-scorched catalogue
of mal-insured countenances.
It must have semblance!
A long-planned relation
(I conjecture, safe from touch)
and, for one unbiased afternoon
that body we all endure
and also its politic gestures
twitched from the crowd
on the slave stage and shore
alive in mindful poverty
far from any water.
The stolen fluid’s reflections
held gruesome consequence
for the innocents (what few)
& appeared—as life will—
to be a sinking fishing boat
carved many years ago
from wild willow
which (now
I reconsider) might
have interested him
if we convened as colleagues.
And yet, the current situation
we deplore and punish ourselves
arose and crashed
in a too-white assemblage, stately
neglectful intercourse.
3- Chance to Utter
Loneliness maintained by a narrowness
sincere and impertinent. To know such portions
of Chinese fields and Egyptian riverbanks
as heard from the paid witnesses.
Never to sight the better roads, and yet
man will labor, as in old books they labor
to throw good fruit into all these machines
required by doubt and some few pay promises
for servitude but dignity holds its prisoners closer.
Too green that eternal resignation
that ancestral necessity sad sprinkle of birds
belief worn system of the very distance
not belonging to the measure and the whole round
the full cup so little spent or noted
in abandonment of frontier weakness
a brutal warmth of wave surprise.
And in the coldest analogies
we rub each form
to agitate for hindrance.
To promulgate locality.
4- Desire-Matter
Forms assumed by desire-matter: hairs of gold scars splashed across grey slate, a limb of blood-milk, veins of dew decorating leaves, smoking arteries petrified in air: these prove the shape the pluriverse wishes to express out of pocket, as it forges its desire through an ecology of need tempered by lethargy. Cognition is weary.
These faint meanders—a suspense of imagined canals—own up to a radical disinterest, Germanic in its rigor. Germans made petulant astronomers.
Slums of slumber upon byways, staring at the bodies of stars captioned by the leaves.
Desires made useful are useless.
The urge is desire’s avant-garde in service to the nagging of the moment.
5- Each Dream So Vast
My heart is a green mist
A coffin for dew.
I dream of ice flashing
on a stone wall
as it vanishes
down the blossoming mountain.
Farther along the mindful path
a sunset bends to listen
to my old friends.
Only complaints.
Rain will someday sparkle
upon my tiny autumn shoes
where my feet hide from Spring
in the red bitter grove.
The simplest echo
is white beads falling
down through branches.
Sounds reach me
disturbing butterflies
dark green in a small doorway.
I hide behind each new flaw.
Why do stars remind me
of children’s paper boats?
Far from shore
the oldest shadows
swim through moonlight.
Red leaves are best
for a poor man’s pillow.
Old bones hold thin dreams.
Where are the forgotten footsteps
Guests who once called to one another?
