I Believe in Everything

Meanwhile Xela is full of Quetzaltecos and carnachos and dreams.

Like the paranormal that goes on
forgotten as soon as seen,
the friends you love forget you love
and never wear the king’s attire.

Like jungles swing out from our hearts
and plants that drip onto your kidneys,
The net to keep around a bed -
Your friend the cat on midnight’s sill.

…and what of it Weird Uncle J,
we’ve lost the war, the Secret Service
being us. What El Ijo del Diablo coughed up,
and he’s the captain of us all.

I sell my wears on winds of trade,
but those who need them seem to fade.
The cat’s alert on midnight’s sill,
there is no pane to keep us in.
Our spirits seep while we’re asleep,
and when we wake its rain again.

For when those think back to the past will see us learn
and laugh and dance. And turn away and come right back.
And go inside and close the door, and cry, and sweat
the beer when we of gods hold on for life
the secret being not here to find.

And on must we, must we must go, and forge
what souvenirs we steal, and track more orbits
through the world, a world we map, a map to lose,
whose land this is we do not know, and never will.

Call it swimming, an afternoon
like this, and wading:
this warming breeze.

The inner square of Ithaca
swept hush, while at its
shore, the terns make

what they make of spring, so early
and itself alone. Divorced
of frost to usher in

the bleating of this year,
evocative of flower storms
that near. They carry in

this breeze on backs, the terns,
to flood this square, its air, like blood.

No difference now,
this outside and what’s not.

November, whenever, 2011

Have not sketched in long time, and it sure feels good. Also haven’t been in this hood in a long time.  I miss cities. But prolly not enough to move from my island paradise.

At the dacha had a sudden urge to go birdwatching (not unusual). The flight of the local Red Tail hawk caught my attention and I looked out of the window. Gone! I grabbed my binoculars and went outside. The day was really gray. Gray like there has never been a blue sky ever.  Leaning against the house, I scanned the sky for hawk. Some neighbors that never come over were milling about the pond close by.  The hawk! He landed on a young poplar not eight feet away.  I could see it just fine, but went for the binoculars anyway. Meanwhile the hawk leaned in, and as he did he morphed into Werner Herzog’s face, which spoke “sometimes it’s best not to look from within.”  A conversation ensued…I tried to explain the necessity of binoculars in birdwatching. The subtleties that are not otherwise visible. The personalities visible upon magnification. That they were not somehow frivolous, the binoculars. Some things were said. I woke up right after HawkHerzong said “yes, but we still live in an industrial and mechanical age.” Go figure!

I think I’ll spend the rest of the day thinking about- binoculars as video cameras, birds, and this idea: the widespread belief that we are somehow post-industrial and beyond mechanical (aka onto digital) is false.