01-05-2017, 06:01 AM
Beyond Literature
We try to get on with the world
but literature says, No
this'll be a pit of irony too,
and they its characters, marooned
on some hostile environment
with irreconcilable differences
tattooed like a teenage rebellion
under every ladder called every door you walk through.
Each character like a picture already painted
with muscles easily outlined to go
from smile to frown or laughter or cruelty,
eyes ready to deceive with the empty richness
behind them.
To be ravished and forgotten, in context
only. Then returned to in a poorman's rehearsal,
not even the writers can remember the lines.
A man'd remember his anniversary
if it weren't for pop culture,
would be first in line at the store
instead of at the bar after work
with his nonliterary friends.
Even the Pope feels he's nothing to write home about when watching The Exorcist.
And his dog lives for friendship
until it dies.
—And will I overheat without an airconditioner
on Christmas Eve?
Watching reruns of people who told me,
while watching screens of memory,
everybody is a death waiting to happen:
Seasons too, but the Earth too changes.
Each time with a dialect far different, I hear from an old friend
only to recognize—a personality extinguished.
From this poetical rat-race, I glean over
in a pool of gloss, unable to distinguish
the reflection of my face
from the arbitrary formation of clouds
that resembles me;
nor that bareheaded death mask
of the gaunt Vietnamese monkey-face which, with sickening smile,
stares absently through me from a black and white magazine.
We try to get on with the world
but literature says, No
this'll be a pit of irony too,
and they its characters, marooned
on some hostile environment
with irreconcilable differences
tattooed like a teenage rebellion
under every ladder called every door you walk through.
Each character like a picture already painted
with muscles easily outlined to go
from smile to frown or laughter or cruelty,
eyes ready to deceive with the empty richness
behind them.
To be ravished and forgotten, in context
only. Then returned to in a poorman's rehearsal,
not even the writers can remember the lines.
A man'd remember his anniversary
if it weren't for pop culture,
would be first in line at the store
instead of at the bar after work
with his nonliterary friends.
Even the Pope feels he's nothing to write home about when watching The Exorcist.
And his dog lives for friendship
until it dies.
—And will I overheat without an airconditioner
on Christmas Eve?
Watching reruns of people who told me,
while watching screens of memory,
everybody is a death waiting to happen:
Seasons too, but the Earth too changes.
Each time with a dialect far different, I hear from an old friend
only to recognize—a personality extinguished.
From this poetical rat-race, I glean over
in a pool of gloss, unable to distinguish
the reflection of my face
from the arbitrary formation of clouds
that resembles me;
nor that bareheaded death mask
of the gaunt Vietnamese monkey-face which, with sickening smile,
stares absently through me from a black and white magazine.
