Wednesday, 4 October 2017

Another new poem in the new series - titled Imagined (at least for now)


The madness of matter:
(gather up your poets)

If we find the smallest ever particle
and then peer microscopically inside
do we find the next smallest particle?

And so the truth becomes a lie
and the lie that there is an end
becomes the truth to be divided —

when to the poet matter does not matter
except in the metaphor created, take this rock
how heavy my heart of late, please, take
this solid rock, and throw it in the lake,
the ripples of my experience, the lake of my tears,
the sound of a heart breaking, the sinking into despair

— until we arrive at the momentous moment
when the rock-solid particle is no more
than a dream within a dreamer’s head
wanting to prove again and again
that anything can be diced and sliced
but everything is real and all that isn’t really
doesn’t matter anymore.

Or, to put it bluntly,
as faceless realists send ‘round the cart,
villagers gather up your poets
and throw them into the streets
as some real unknown stranger cries,
bring out your dead,
bring out your dead!’

and listen for the poet’s body
hitting the one below it, being hit
by the next to be thrown, like lines
and words and rhymes, mangled
and tangled, paradise lost
as the real cart carts them off
into the cowboy’s sunset,
‘bring out your dead
bring out your dead!’


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