Idle
Idle
the distant but grinding crash of a wave on a beach
the skurl and scar of chisel against wood
beginnings are so easy:
you take the edge between both hands,
you hope that by the time you come to the end,
that you got your line straight.
examine these ragged ends,
these loose fibers and filaments:
they form an alien landscape
hills and valleys; a distant horizon.
consider:
is that not, more or less, half?
and gently, so gently, i pull again.
a second's sound bite of a rocket launching from canaveral
the deep churning of ancient engines through water
destruction and hope -
half, fourth, eighth, sixteenth.
sooner or later i'll have confetti.
what will i celebrate?
each moment, each action is shorter than the last.
a thirty-second and now the whole is smaller than the palm of my hand.
what once was larger than my own head,
at sixty-fourths is too thick to go all at once.
rending is not always such an exact business.
i guess that these are more or less rectangles -
along the line of best fit all things may be made more exact.
i have destroyed a page,
i may yet destroy the world.
hey look, new poetry.
this, and all the ones for October that follow, are parts of pages i resurrected recently.
stuff i scribbled but found no use for.
i'm putting it up in the hopes of reigniting a spark.
the distant but grinding crash of a wave on a beach
the skurl and scar of chisel against wood
beginnings are so easy:
you take the edge between both hands,
you hope that by the time you come to the end,
that you got your line straight.
examine these ragged ends,
these loose fibers and filaments:
they form an alien landscape
hills and valleys; a distant horizon.
consider:
is that not, more or less, half?
and gently, so gently, i pull again.
a second's sound bite of a rocket launching from canaveral
the deep churning of ancient engines through water
destruction and hope -
half, fourth, eighth, sixteenth.
sooner or later i'll have confetti.
what will i celebrate?
each moment, each action is shorter than the last.
a thirty-second and now the whole is smaller than the palm of my hand.
what once was larger than my own head,
at sixty-fourths is too thick to go all at once.
rending is not always such an exact business.
i guess that these are more or less rectangles -
along the line of best fit all things may be made more exact.
i have destroyed a page,
i may yet destroy the world.
hey look, new poetry.
this, and all the ones for October that follow, are parts of pages i resurrected recently.
stuff i scribbled but found no use for.
i'm putting it up in the hopes of reigniting a spark.