Manic
It’s late and I
am still awake,
my father’s blue
eyes roving wildly
beneath their lids
in dreamy fits
of reluctant sentimentality,
each surge of flaky vision
cardinal, those first roots bursting
from the violence
of the bulb.
-
The mind is planted
long before it opens, like a tulip,
which must be buried in November
and forced to feel the chill
of dead December,
whose callous bulb refuses
to just break
until it’s worth
at least its weight
in cold.
-
The best blooms try to catch
the eye like plumes or fires—
sorry victims of Beauty:
the bulb-breaking virus
which is selflessly weeding
its breath-taking carelessness
right out of history.
-
We are not free,
but travelling
by the force our own
momentum, which takes us
wherever it wants us—
which makes us.
Some things are driven
by their heaviest expense—
too heavy a burden
to keep anything worth it
very long in this plane
of existence.
-
It’s no wonder Dutch still-lifes
seem recklessly idealistic.
We can’t sustain anything fine
without going ballistic.
