April 1, 2003

• Expression! Go ahead and try,
  Paint me a picture,
  A pretty picture,
  Framed in carbuncled jade,
  A canvas smeared with tinted thoughts.
  In order to display
  The inner workings of this
  Capricious projector
  With yellowed transparencies,
  One must be willing
  To distort and destroy
  The natural texture of the canvas
  Itself.
  
  

  I cannot bring forth the strangled
  Gutted fish
  Who swim the thirsty deep,
  I cannot fill their mouths with blood
  With a bite on the wicked barb
  Of the wicked hook;
  They are too fast,
  Too slippery to seize and wring,
  To net in my shabby net,
  To reel with my ragged reel.
  They swim far too deeply
  To catch with a mere rod
  Held in my mere hands.
  
  

  Some of them
  Thrash about in mad circles,
  Their insane flurries of bubbles
  Floating to the placid surface,
  Serving only to confuse
  The foolish fisherman.
  Others
  Plow onward in tranquil journey,
  Stolidly ignoring
  The dangling sickles that,
  Alluring,
  Dangle before their beady eyes.
  
  

  And still how
  Do I entrap
  The leviathans
  Who are the terror of the darkest blues,
  Their white pale skins
  Surfacing like islands
  And jetting their hot fury,
  So that the mizzen men cry in terror
  Before they submerge once more.
  They bring the stench of land,
  And the carrion birds
  Follow in their wrathful wake.
  What quarrel have I
  That I would call such beasts
  To the fore
  And combat them with
  Puny rod and string?
  They will only shatter my boat,
  Scatter it across
  The shoreless sea.
  These, what am I to do with these,
  These monsters
  That I must call to me,
  That would swallow me
  In their intensity.
  
  

  I will feel my heart burst from my thund’rous chest
  As they explode from the deep
  And then be carried with them
  To die, to die, to sleep.

  

  • 10:04 pm
  • 8 Comments