How We Divined

Back in those days, we considered

Ourselves prophets

Before we considered ourselves pears

Or forms of speech, or ironies

Or bed-rail frames or carriage bolts.

Exclamation marks passed us by even

As apostasia further withdrew

Its latest line of questioning.

We slowed on the tolls for exact change.

We changed clothes at an alarming rate,

Flinging personas on and off, noir like

A change of directions, blank like

A change of expression.  You want

Tone?  Go elsewhere.  Point?  Harken

To the convoluted middle of the poem

Coming right up before the beginning.

The real beginning, the back in those days – 

How pretty we thought ourselves

Before we orphaned us out as digits,

Or handbags, or theories without base,

Before we pleased us with speculation

About the body-less mind, with how

Corporeal form could override the common

Sense in action.  I don’t know.

Sometimes you plow fields.

Sometimes you field plows.

You dream of your mother, of your father,

The spunk that created your being,

You shudder to think.  You stand

With the mirror, looking with prophet eyes

At the self you will become, with hindsight

At the self you will become in the last frame.

You seek ability to name, to name that

Which you seek ability to know,

You are ancient in your belief that to name

Is to know, 

you are ancient and you are wrong.

Let this line stand as the sum of our collected

Works:  at the self we left behind

With the broken sand, the disjointed clouds,

The arrogant dirt, the bark presented

For curative reasons only, this hide

Of memories, these rows to hoe,

These rows to hoe, let this line

Stand as legs under a mattress,

Stand as a forest amongst the trees,

Let this line stand, let this stand

Become the point where we exclaim:

I think I may, I think I might…

© 2006/12 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved