Like the Ukrainians
We are encircled by enormous forces
That we cannot control,
The old man says.
The forces are building and building
Every day, getting stronger.
Let us talk to them.
We aren't going to invade
We have no intention of invading you.
We just want to make sure
That you don't get any ideas.
We are just
Following our mandate, they say.
Which is what? asks the old man.
Haha. To make money, of course!
If we have to shame our ancestors
We will do that, they say.
If we have to eat your dreams,
We will eat your dreams.
But don't your hearts hurt? asked the old man.
We don't know what you're talking about.
Our brains are clean.
Our hearts are sterile.
All we do is for money.
Zoom in.
The forces are joking.
They don't look like killers in camouflage,
With guns and war-machines,
With blackened faces.
They look like politicians and leaders of business.
One looks like Al Gore.
And one a little like McKibben.
They are talking,
Bullshitting,
Looking at their phones.
They are cleaning their teeth
With tiny bones.
Zoom in further.
See the color of their eyes?
See how unfinished they are?
A little blurry.
A little vacant.
A little unstable.
Zoom out.
How long
Before they kill us?
Can you hear the cry of a hawk
Calling to its fate.
Sreeeee! Sreeeee!
This is such an old story.
The old man crunches his back,
Stands up as straight as he can.
He leans on his staff.
He seems to know what is coming.
I am ashamed to be in this story
The old man says.
.........
Who is the old man? To be honest, at first I thought it was me, but by the time the poem was written I realized it was the archetype of the wise man.
What has been coming up in my poetry is a kind of mythic theater of recurring archetypes, or new and recurring. I am not trying to write "good" poetry any more. I am only writing what I consider adequate poetry because the story is the important thing, not so much how I spin it . . . although, I believe that a style is emerging in spite of my disinterest! But suffice it to say, my old way of writing, i.e, refining drafts, restricting myself to certain stylistic concerns, is out the window. I can come up with any number of examples of these mythic-theater poems. They are designed to be posted, not published. And by posted I mean posted in the "commons" on a digital wall. It took me a while to realize that. These are poems for the moment, because we are living in a time when one would be foolish to write for posterity, like a Blake or a Rilke or Mary Oliver.
All we really have now, and all we are really accountable for, or responsible for, is the moment! But, to be more precise, what we have, if we zoom in on it, is a fractal linkage of moments that are freeze-framing certain archetypes, so, our moment is not ephemeral but it is a continuous moment depending on how many dots one is able to connect analogically.
In this poem, I use zooming in and zooming out as a device to navigate the fractal universe of the poem. There is no limit to how closely I might look or how far I might back off. Close or distant, I'm looking at the same patterns. They are infinite or they would be if I let them. It is up to me to draw the line, to end the poem. I think the trick, for me, for the kind of poetry I am writing, is to know when I have explored a certain fractal theme or pattern enough to say, That's it, I see it. Then I can get ready for the next one.
(Article changed on Feb 20, 2022 at 11:37 AM EST)
(Article changed on Feb 20, 2022 at 2:26 PM EST)
(Article changed on Feb 20, 2022 at 2:31 PM EST)
