Friday, March 20, 2009

My Dialectics (between something here and somewhere else)

kids are eleven
circling around streetlamps, waiting-
waiting to get high, circling,
waiting, hanging, talking,

finally, a sigh.

We dive into the sky
above the city filled with smoke and air, flying like
a few soft luftballons.
One very asthmatic girl is struggling to keep up and hopes that no one notices;
with no mind, she can see the tops of people's heads, how their cowlicks swirl out from the center, how they compose themselves in mirrors and in line at the pharmacy, how they are easily confused.
Our boy, like a scientist, observes everything but keeps his mind in check...from going to the dark place, that is...death and the future...and on what must be here now.
And the one who goes off - me - I'm going into a space where no one can follow.

the Void

I see it in my spiral-headed friends - coughing babies - old eyes hiding from Years as they march into the Rat-Hole
all just for trying to get higher, into the atmosphere, comfortable away from home.

the kids are eleven (and twelve now
and one tonight is striking thirteen)
and they're striving to get high
"Why, why don't we care why?"
We all philosophize, sometimes;
it's regrettable,
like losing your keys in a crack.
Forget all your questions and come back to the streets where
the pennies linger many among the people of the earth -
then, I think, back on Earth
"We'll get something right eventually."

My dialectics are
(the pennies between here and there)
Oedipus/Antigone, each one is a child;
Echo/Narcissus, each one a lover;
Sisyphus/the Stone, each one is the other.

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