Speaking in Tongues

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Speaking in Tongues

We carry Maya in our pockets
as if the illusions outside our brain
                             were merely a green screen
where we act out what delusions we can.

My thought for the day
arrived at after mowing an acre of rescue grass    SORRY
                          (Bromus catharticus), 
an hour reading Edmund Wilson on Marx,
and a complex series of naps,
an idea simmered through an oversimplified day.

So they come, 
                        another:  Gaza=John Ford’s The Searchers.
It’s plain as day, but where are our prophets?

Drowning in Maya,
                         down by the railroad track.

Thanks for the edit.  I've actually decided to add to it in an ongoing way, with little or no editing.

---

Babel (First Floor)

Yesterday, I fought the first two days
                           of Gettysburg,
I was the Union General Meade,
thrusting the tiny pixeled brigades
                        into the hornet-like Confederates.
Today, the dismal end: Pickett’s suicide charge.
"No 15,000 men ever born 
                     can take that position"--Longstreet to Lee
( I did win once, when I was playing 
                           God is a Confederate.)

It’s the only video game I own,
I’ve played it 400 hours.

I was six years old 
at the beginning of  the Centennial of the Civil War,
and I received
                   a 5 lb. picture history 
(as an endearment
something rare for him
                              my father called me Captain,
because when looking at a sinking ship
he told that the Captain always went down too
and I said I’d prefer not to.)

“I’d prefer not to” has been writ across my face
                           ever since,
I’m a highly functional Bartleby.