Two Poems

[rowens]

If Now A Fly

If a fly
Could show you how it sees,
If a fly could want such
A thing:
It wouldn’t show you as a fly,
But a fly.


The Homosexual Fly

a fly that lives one day
but not to breed,
like birds and bees
and flowers and trees
that rhyme in the time honored vision of a God,
but like a piece of a chip
of wood,
nearby,
the desert where death doesn't even
live enough to eat;
and a fly isn't human.

[billy]

while one plays off the other i'm not sure the 1st one holds much weight, in relation to the 2nd which is a bold statement of a poem. or perhaps it's the other way round and the 2nd poem is the one that carries less weight because it isn't treating the fly as a fly but as A fly.

i'm presuming the homosexual fly isn't a catholic

[Wildcard]

So is the fly . . . I mean what is the dif- erm . . . I don't get it

I normally don't get stuff when everyone else does because I am an illiterate redneck In general I thought the first poem was good, but I will need to visit it a time or two to make sure that I give it a chance to make sense to me . . .

The second poem didn't end like I expected it to so I was again perplexed. Why is the fly gay again? And is this a set of poems that are presented as a set or have you chosen to post them here for another reason?

I am anxious to see some of your other stuff . . . off to read Thanks for sharing.

[rowens]

I'm not a fly or a homosexual or a Catholic. And I admit I wrote the second poem months before the first one, and that I didn't utilize the exercise as I'm about to describe it in the specific case of either of these two. But I like an exercise where you take an hour one day to take a solitary walk or watch tv trying your best to view and experience everything as a prejudiced Catholic, then an hour the next day as homosexual or anything else that you don't normally identify with. It's much easier to merge a Catholic with a homosexual point of view than a man and a fly's experience. But on the third day, you can try to become a fly in your mind for an hour, to the best of your ability. On the fourth day, become all three at once. Then ask yourself what if any purpose it may have served. I like things like that.

[billy]

tomorrow i shall be an aardvaek .

basically it's like a fly on the wall of a fly on the wall or a homosexual fly on the wall.

[rowens]

I think about a person talking and a dog starts barking, and the person responds to the dog with insults or violence, as if the dog had disrespected him. As if a dog lives by human rules. And people insult others by calling them a dog or a homosexual. That you can be both homosexual and human is obvious; but if you find yourself treated horribly for years by human beings that insist humans are not homosexual you might be moved to feel this way: "Fine, I'd rather not be human. I don't want to be like you. I might be an alien, but you can adjust the laws to consider my existence, and others like me." I read that Tolkien distinguished between his good and bad characters this way: The good can imagine being bad, but the core of the bad's evil was their lack of imagination. The good can empathize with the bad and relate to being evil, but being evil means you can't and won't imagine new things and other ways of life.

[billy]

i like that reply. i seldom think as deep as that and it's probably one of my failings.
what it boils down to is; we are who and what we are;, if yo don't accept the fact, then that's your problem.