Theory of Evolution

There are, if you think about it,

worse things than being listed as being

‘on life support, clinically

dead, and much improved.’

The and just kills you there, doesn’t it,

its placement so hopeful, so denying

the previous clause, as though no

amount of pause will erase

either the dead or the life

you support. 

The drive from the airport

will catch your attention if you

can embrace tumbleweed on lava,

wild goats and rampant donkeys

lining the highway:  everything seems

out of place here, nothing works,

and your much improved

diagnosis falls into deeper and grander

doubt.  Some days you miss a hare,

some lines you miss a rabbit.

Why make up,

why the impulse?

If you mean a toaster, say

a toaster.  Anger, too, rings the cherries

on a fire but remember when 

- according to Hass, who would say

according to an ancient Chinese poet,

I’ll bet

– poetry answers the questions

philosophy was not built to tackle? 

Tense.

If you mean a much

improved toaster, say

a much improved toaster;

I’m unclear what

question that answers but

don’t let chortling songbirds

or spiffling whirlybirds turn you aside

when you ask your clinically dead

questions. 

To make up

is not just to invent but also to reconcile

(also to prettify, but another time,

another subject)

and where’s the fun in that? 

You may never get an answer but

if you won’t get all Buddhist on me,

vengeance is mine sayeth

the little toaster that could. 

I think I can I

think I can, said he, right before

the short circuit

and thinking ceased

and canning ceased. 

Nothing’s healthier

than staring down the barrel

of a tumbleweed on a grossly misplaced

lava field and wondering

at the time you’ve spent wondering

why you spend

so much time wondering about

time.  It would fit here

to mention that everything

passes eventually,

especially the notion that everything

passes because eventually? 

It’s not something at which you spend

that much time wondering.

You just think you do: 

it’s different, promise.

It’s easy to understand that goats

were brought to drive

out the mongoose that

were brought to drive out the snakes that

were brought to drive out the rats that

had never actually inhabited the island

and weren’t going to, dagnabbit,

as long as the snakes survived

the goat-surviving mongoose

as long as the mongoose

cultivated a taste for green garden

variety serpent. 

Goats and mongoose, for what

it’s worth, oh by the way, lay down together. 

Or ignore each

other.  You just don’t understand

my suffering, as I bring to you another

installment in the

what were you thinking

chronicles.  Sunsets on the harbor,

there?  Big deal.

Sun has to set somewhere.

© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas