The Ancients

(Another winter poem, reworked. Don't worry, I'll have some optimistic spring poems soon!)

Occupied by the materialness of truth:

What colour is the truth? How long is it?

How wide?

Is it wet or dry?

Would it respond if I said hi?

Does the truth make the tide go and the birds fly?

The Ancients:

I see them as the oldest trees in a green grove.

I see their faces tired and stretched,

wrinkled and hanging from the places they once were.

I see them but they cannot see me and so I cannot ask them

what they think, if they need

a drink, if they smell our polluted stink.

They are tired. No longer interested in the truth.

They remember the days going to the hilled place with my love.

He to snowshoe amongst them,

I to swim in what was once their waters,

But is now perverse and burning, responsible for their wrinkles,

their colour-fade.

The truth once had colour. It is now grey .

 

Wings

On the wings of a plane there are

footprints, an opaque hue; a mirage.

On the wings of a plane there is oxygen, still breathing.

There is time, still beating. Caught between places.

The e word

So he asks me why I care about equality.

I’ll tell you:

Equality calls to me like an old friend, wind carries her voice past the lighthouse, over the foghorn’s moan, through the darkness.

Equality wants to be here with me, holding my hand, kissing my palms.

She wants my emancipation; she wants me to feel ecstasy, she wants my river to overflow, sending all the villagers with no eyes, no colour, downstream never to return.

Equality wants to braid my hair and warm my neck, letting me spill the tears from my mouth from so long ago.

She wants to know why I won’t cry.

Equality wants to hear the things I refuse to say; the things no one knows are scratching at my throat; clawing, scraping to get out. They dig and they dig, but no daylight do they see.

Equality.     

I need her and she needs me.

Citizen

What makes a citizen? Who decides? Who doesn’t belong, and who, legitimized, never considers it.

What makes a person? Their flesh, their thoughts?

How long will it take for me to become a citizen? The grass that I stand on does not grow for me; the air, reserved for someone else. The earth, the seeds, have been nourished by hostile soil, so that no matter how I toil I am not here. Transience, such a funny thought.

The branches all point in the same direction: away.

Paper tells me things that I cannot believe. And so I dig, deeper, deeper, searching, imploring these pages, these words to tell me what I know is there: valleys, unseen, hiding, affecting gravity.

Gullies in the fields, spaces in the equality that is described on the pages that I read.

And so I ask, what makes a citizen? The land they own? Do they stand alone? Do they need the outside to define their own? Like a home, does its structure protect what is inside?

I turn to the soil, that births the wood from which the house’s outside is derived: but the wood is hollow, lacking detail, monotone. Its song, thin and dry.

And the builders forgot so many things.

What if words disappear?

What would happen if words stopped holding significance in the world, and images took their place as  force? Well, people would stop reading, except to get that retro, non-conformist effect. The same effect that makes teenagers play records on their parents’ old record players that they dust off and drag from the garage into their bedrooms.            

            People would stop reading the news and would only see the news. (This has begun to happen.) Images of cars exploding and mothers with dark eyes, crying, would tell all we need to know. In some ways interpreting things for oneself is better than being fed a pre-interpreted story by other people’s words. The problem is when we are shown a tiny fragment of the situation and then have to try and interpret our way into its reality. Footage exists to replace live experience. But if it offers a narrow view of an event, accurate understanding is not possible. We run the risk of being led to believe the belief of the footage-taker (or their editor). In this way, image is more powerful than word because the viewer is unaware that they are being led to the conclusion about what they are seeing. It’s manipulative. And it would lead to a similar-minded society (wherever the same images are being projected) without their being aware of the reasons for their ideas.

            Relying on images for information rather than people’s words could be liberating; it would mean not relying on ‘the expert’ for their opinion anymore. But some people know more than others about certain things, and so we’d loose out on legitimate expertise if we did away with all authoritative force. And words, because they leave more to the imagination that images, require a level of involvement from the reader. They allow for and encourage thought on the part of the reader as well. Even the strongest one-sided text (early Marx comes to mind), provokes other thoughts, critiques, expansions. Images hold the beginning and end of themselves, in themselves.[1] They do not provoke critique, because what one sees is what is. A video or photograph of a car exploding is a car exploding. And when one sees an image of a car exploding they have an immediate emotional reaction. Seeing this does not provide time to sit back and think about the reasons or the person who made this happen or anything else. All the viewer can think about is that a car with a person in it just exploded and that is bad. Text on the other hand, while having the ability to evoke strong emotional reactions, and lasting ones, does not have such an immediate response time. It allows the reader to take time to digest the words, and analyze them. When a person sees an image that they have an immediate emotional reaction to, they are more likely to have a knee-jerk reaction to it and act in a way that is not fully thought out. There is more chance (not that it is by any means a sure thing) that someone who reads about something will analyze and critique what they read, providing a chance for a more level-headed response.

            So what would happen if word were overtaken by image? The world would be less thoughtful, would criticize the information they were given less, and would have less perspective. Lets keep reading.

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[1] I am not writing about artistic images, such as paintings or sketches; these forms do allow for and encourage involvement. The images I have in mind are those of TV news.

I'm riding in my baby's car, his hand sandwiched between my left knee and hand.
I ask him if he thinks I could be a writer.
He asks, 'what kind of writer baby? Novels? Stories?'
'No,' I say, 'more like philosophical ramblings. Personal rants.' I laugh awkwardly.
A pause. The classic rock station hums along on the radio.
His hand intermittently slips out of its spot to change gears, adjust the wipers.
'I'm going to say something kind of unexpected and probably cliche..."
'Ok,' I say, nervous.
'Why don't you start you a blog?'
So this is for Shayne. (If you can dedicate a blog to someone, I'm new to this.)
Thank you for quietly and consistently supporting me; I think I finally believe you when you say you believe in me.