No. Does the foot walk?
No.
Does the brain make us dream?
No.
The wind of the cosmos blows through us and plays us.
When we dream it plays us, in dream fashion.
When we wake it plays us in waking fashion.
Like a flute on the one hand and on the other hand a sax.
Our now kisses the future and the future kisses back.
The depression left by a thumb in a warm thigh
Let’s us sit still for a moment and the moment rushes by.
But I stand there holding a basket of spiracles and brouhahas
And I can see the question in her eyes it is
“How would you have it if no having adhered to flesh?”
The cumuli drip but before the storm they didn’t know what they were preparing.
And teetering top to bottom I tap my tongue on the alveolar ridge
Three times. And my alveoli, the human spiracle expire my spirit
And l’m faced with a bruise in the firmament like an unwanted kid
Who has to knock down a tower every day to scavenge love from the rebar
telling me its theory
that the soul is a sphere
but then it corrects itself
it is constantly correcting itself
and says it is not actually a sphere
but we call it a sphere in order to convey
that it lacks any sort of lack or insufficiency
it takes a stick in its beak, it clears the ground with its wings
and starts sketching a system. it draws a circle and labels it
“language” and then on the perimeter it writes “reality”
and then draws another circle around those two and labels that “the
complign sphere of intercessionality” and then it says — look, beyond that circumference
Do you see? Do you see? SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK Do you see?
The wings of the bird are blowing up the dirt where it (he? she?) drew its diagrams the sky
is too dark to see it is an orange red, the spirit of my father and mother are forming on the whirlwind
my heart is in my mouth, dust is in my mouth, I cannot see or hear, I think this will be the day I am born.
(after Browning)
This Duchess is nothing like
The Last Duchess. the Last Duchess
Had a row of colored lights
This tells lies about places she’s never been.
She says the Old King kept her in a bamboo cage
And tickled her through the stems
With a crow feather. She says
She had to learn verses to earn clothes.
The Old King was not like that.
He passed laws. He wore an ermine cape.
He had a fine mustache…
He passed laws. He was a merry old soul.
He never did like that though
He held a crow feather at all times
With a peculiar smell.
The Old Duchess was smooth to the touch
And hummed when she was working properly.
Talarik the lame
Called himself that cause cheetahs outpaced him
And Talarik the Dark because the sun
Didn’t need his face to make the day.
Lochinvar the Lucky
Cursed the day he was born
Because he wished it would all have been his doing
And not the work of a Blessed Star.
If you release him from his vow
He will be taller than you.
But he will never remember you
But he will hold a key to a city.
Maybe when you release him
You build the city he
Will hold the key to
But you may never go there,
Not even, especially not in, a dream.
man has cervices and pink lips in ’em
and I do too and I do too
to vocalize. etheriums apprehending
this big-eared cat with spots
mysteriums tremending
the one who gots what he gots
his name is cerval. lookit’m four feet
do leap do leap
lookit’m tail wah! cerval cat.
nor caracal not ocelot nor lynx
he got ceviches in his niches
he bedizen the horizon in crepuscular zeiten
Eheu!
a frisson of a wagon – ah!
and tourmalines and olives
beckoning not promising
a presentation of a moment -well!
they carried on a gurney – that
is something to poke with the tongue
oh the cliff-dwellers! oh the painted rocks!
oh the petroglyphs. The petroglyphs.
The petroglyphs…
Paint it on the tongue. Paint it on the tongue.
Unwrap the present. Dapple the moment.
Stipple the tongue. With sugar now
Now now now now now and with icing
Eric Linus Kaplan 