Intrepid Dreamers
Starved for art,
we were made for poetry;
we are mad for poetry.
Study this hunger;
learn how to feed it.
Intrepid dreamers—
tuned to unhearable frequencies—
used to outnumber charlatans.
Now the emperor
has no clothes,
but everyone else is blind.
Time to get acquainted
with the dark;
the future erases the present;
the past will disappear
over the abyss of hope.
Regeneration relies
on the heart’s ability to heal.
All the rest is hypothesis:
high art or sensual pleasure,
pessimism or good fortune—
hold these carefully in hand,
and make a choice.
(thanks to Richard Powers’ Orfeo)
Meanwhile
in the bright green
room of the world,
she waited,
welling up
with droplets
from wandering
clouds
that washed her eyes
with roiling
rhythms.
A rapidity
of emotional
electricity,
like a radio
stuck
between channels,
hammered
at her frazzled brain,
as if a signal
tower
had conducted
sizzling whispers,
jamming the senses,
and
reversing all polarity
inside the bright green
room of the world.
Variations on Nineteen Words
Break free from captured hopes; dreams should just keep on working. Unfairness
is slated to come down. Negotiate critical opportunities; create an honorable world.
Criticism’s coming down; work to break unfairness in the captured world. Just negotiate
to keep creating—freedom should be an honorable slate, a dream of hope and opportunity.
Come, keep creating opportunity from broken dreams. Hope to recapture unfair criticism.
The world is a just and honorable work. Negotiate downwards, free of a slate of shoulds.