The more we know the less
we understand - as if that
were equal to sage advice
like a bird in the hand.
But facts are facts and that's
just a stack of inventory,
the result of an over-eager
ingestion. But we need some
mental bile and certain other
juices of digestion before
insight can be sent flashing
down the brain's oily sluices
into the gaping vat of mastery.
The gray light grows
lighter as morning
comes closer, and the
dawn swells greater
and greater as the first
forms become clear.
Poetry is
a many-feathered thing,
and the frame
of poetry is hung
on a language - bones of
grammar, sinews of
semantics, out of which
grows shimmering plumage,
each word a feather,
abundant shades of color,
depending on how
the sunlight hits it;
and then the shudder when
it wings and sings.
Four sable crows
all in a row plow
snow-laden air,
and yet remain
wisps of shade
while making
haste with stealth.
Dare fatis vela is what you decide.
With your eyes you size up the hull
and measure the tide. The mast is
upright, and the mooring ropes all
cast aside. You may sail far away
or maybe not at all! - keep in mind
there's no recourse to any police force
when you're dealing with such caprice.
And if you had just known the price
beforehand, you simply wouldn't have
handed your karma over to the Fates,
to sail both charted and uncharted seas,
sail too near fords, or negotiate fjords,
eluding Scylla only to be consumed
by Charybdis, because now you see
the Fates can't be lured or implored.
Hummingbird, its thrumming mandible
docked deep inside the nectary, filling
its ruby-colored reliquary with saccharine
sustenance, its figure engaged in a dance,
as the paper-thin wings keep a stabilizing
rhythm, a rolling, a partial oscillation
around the horizontal, and the peristaltic
movements of the slender, centered throat
of this ruby-throated hummingbird keep
the ambrosial nectar coming and coming.
Poetry is the devil's wine,
they say. And that's just
fine because no one can deny
his cosmopolitan style.
But the cons of devil's wine
may in fact outweigh the pros
if you're vehemently opposed
to what many consider to be
the defining traits of both
poetry and wine: ecstasy
and intoxication. Exhilaration
may well be tops of the pros
of the divinest verse whether
long or terse or hard to get at
at first, and the one that flows
down deep furrows and slakes
a heretofore unknown thirst.
1.
Can the brain
change the brain,
ending the latter's
tyrannous reign?
The incorrigible
gene needn't feign
mastery over every
act or lofty thought
because its power,
strong as gravity,
goes unnoticed
and is all too easy
to maintain.
2.
But if the brain is
the brain, then
who or what is
doing the shaping?
It's true the brain
looks like clay, but
better minds know
taking hands to that
fatty mass will mess
with all its delicate
circuits and relays.
3.
Maybe the brain
can change
the brain.
It's undeniable that
the brain
gains both mass and
insight by
running the gauntlet
of life (hopefully
with a
resilient helmet).
4.
Without being
the same, umpteen
trains of thought
worm their way
adroitly through
gray matter as if
it were an apple.
And just as worms
burrow into fruit,
words and forms
enter the brain,
blending and then
coalescing until
they reach a final
amalgamation.
But then there's
no way to tell
what's what, and so
that just adds to all
the mystification.
5.
Some say thoughts
are what train
the brain - but
then where do
thoughts come from?
Do they float
idly through the ether,
drifting toward
a webbed encephalon?
Or do bits seep
out of dense marrow,
condense into
an intense nodule
unable to wait for
tomorrow, embedding
itself into the brain
with earnest compulsion?
6.
Is the brain for us or
against us? Is there
even an us separate from
soma, axon and dendrite
multiplied a billionfold
in an organ whose folds
are home to neurons
more fecund than that
pump house of sperm?
Speaking of tails, there's
a clue that may help us
sift through this whole
mess. Myth may come to
our aid, provide context for
what appears to be a
conundrum for some. The
ouroboros is an ancient
serpent depicted devouring
its own tail, and yet it lives,
eternally. It's a primitive
cybernetic feedback loop.
Our brain may be like this,
even though at times it
gets frenetic and can make
one of your eyelids droop.
But the brain is not behind
an Iron Curtain, and the
ouroboros contains no
bits that are ferrous...
7.
Some will still assert
that because we don't know
what makes neurons start
or ideas flow, there must be
a ghost somewhere in the machine.
Some won't even dare to flirt
with the can of worms, preferring
to stay mum or even inert.
Another side is less harmless,
those who confidently insist
that empiricism is best, and so
even dare to tell us there is no us.
Again the time comes when
the tearing wind and thrashing rain
denude the icons of the season.
We love their audacious gold,
gold being the item of desire
and awe of our race across space
and time. In the still-green yard
the scattered members of what was
a brilliant whole lie noiseless
and still. There is no life out there.
Some are lying adjacent, others
overlapping. What was radiant gold
wrapped around each tree is now
faded yellow on the ground. Gold
stands for what our human sentiment
arbitrarily assigns to elements. Gold
rings, gold trees. All is as it must be.
The yellow leaves are merely debris.
In Dostoevsky's
The Double, the hero
is a split self. But
things are much more
knotty than that, not
as clearly discrete,
not a neat and tidy
dissection, cut up
into two chunks. In fact,
persons are splintered,
like thousands of
iron filings skirting
the sticky edges of a
permanent magnet,
crowding around
their chosen poles.
So maybe now we have
the whole notion.
Treading water,
fatigue and
foaming spatter
can make you
falter.
An undulating
plane is all that
separates you from
two worlds: one
where some
hope is clung to
like barnacles
to a hull.
The other
we could call
surrender - the willful
softening of all
long-taut muscles
thanks to a cascade
of chemicals deep
inside the brain.
And no one will know
about the throes
of anguish in this
little pixel of ocean,
once you've seamlessly
slipped beneath the plane
with barely a blip
or detectable ripple.
