the respiratory habits of fish

if there's some habit, vitamin, pharmaceutical
that corrects short attention spans
I haven't seen it. 

all day long my eyes drown
in the hapless, abject conformity
of turdsuckers overpiling with words
and not a flare of meaning or 
whit discernible, 

their voices trapped in some world before language:
immigrants of this unwanted country
this timeline all futures would beg to be spared from--
the leaves and the rocks and the wind
and what else move in the space
of the expanding universe and I try 

to meditate on the respiratory habits
of fish: those whose ancestors navigated, bred 
endured trials century and millennia
old, hungry, thinking creatures
with a perception older than dinosaurs,
citizens of a world no name has been provided. 



**** 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Various Appointments (to be completed, soonish)

ONE  At night, he'd lay a plastic tarp in a wooded area near the edge of the city he relied upon, a certain modicum of gratitude in the ritual. He'd remove the comforter from the large leaf-bag, unroll it, shake it, lay it upon the tarp. He'd take some default note of the temperature--typically cold--and provoke a small memory of endurance, push against the unkindness of his situation. It was all but permanently bad, hardly more than an accumulation of rudeness and inhospitability that consumed the energy and good will that wagered against it. He'd lay a backpack with a few books and like supplies and everyday needs such as a toothbrush at the head of the blanket and remove his coat and sweater and fold them into a pillow and set the bundle atop the backpack. The hard air running slow and steady through everything. And on nights when he was sober enough to, he'd remove his shoes, socks, pants, shirt, and set these somewhere dry enough, close enough, for the morning....
Read more

glass [and] razorblades

 glass ~ even the routinely-poor are afforded  some small mercies and graces --  earlier, today, for instance  a discreet 3-panel  animation of a woman  smoking in close-up  of narrowing proximity  rolled into my periphery of  a sudden at the weedstore  and, tonight, outside the church  where my eyes close to some rest:  the fierce stone of the architecture  spraying indismissibly into  the moment...  ...when counselors,  nurses,  clerks, interviewers,  doctors, various staff  ask me why I consume  alcohol to the degree I do,  this is what I can't remember  or manage  to tell them, this  perpetual, permanent  withering, something abundant yet  feeble in its abundance, the glass  before something else  that always  was.  ****  razorblades  ~ stuff this into your brain:  there's this overflowing pile  of billions and more...
Read more