a quote of Bernard-Henri Lévy

~~~

the divers’ recovery, diverse,
shipwrecked salvage from different locations,
auctioned to the highest bidder,
tho the excised excerpts are exceptional,
none come to do the bidding,
for the provenance of words
belongs to all, and to none

~~
“so oft we trifle words,
expel them from the country of our body,
without passport and earnestness,
as if they were the cheapest of footnote filler,
day tourists, to be treated as leavings,
refuse for daily discardation,
barely noting their fast comings and faster disappearance,
but leaving not, a mark of distinction”

“the addicted pleasure words granted to we privileged few,
like every enslaved soul to the mind, which I am, I am,
evening dreams, midnight thinkings, sunrise seeings,
how can I infect and thus protect the young to the liberty
to love the crafted content of our human essence to better
comprehend that a moment caught on tape of our shared
words is a holiday, a celebration for the ages...and every molecule,
becomes a human tuning fork in concert, in pitch identical, in blood tainted with the simplicity of we are all the same, only words, this will transmit”

“murmur me, with soft downy charms,
these words discovered
recoursed and intended well to
pointedly offset and contradict
their very own tumultuous discovery uncovering,
tear tongue me
with calming, lapping word  wages,
hymns harmonious and fine homilies,
a call, a request,
a bequest
to sedate my shrill life

“some cells, microscopic, preserved digitally,
aged to imperfection, thrash my eyes,
making me speak in tongues I do not recognize,
but fluently possess, no wonder there,
the memory place fairly empty,
room aplenty for passerby's and the imagery
                                                         ­­ of the vaguest of dearly departed

skin is not the only mot shed,
                                                sloughing of woeful words”

“speak them slow and distinct,
for they arrive slow to you,
a trickling of refugees for your sheltering,
harbor them as full companions,
protected by natural law,
provision them well,
prepared and ever ready for a quick departure,
moor these words at the embarcadero,
for the next restless leg of endlessness,
which they themselves will inform you
will last longer than eternity,
long after there are no humans to speak them”

There was a runner, a fisherman and a photographer
and they all dreamt of seeing the Northern Lights
when they got there
the fisherman ran,
the runner stopped to take a photo
and the photographer sat and stared

There was a poet, a carpenter, and a lunatic
and they all dreamt of fame.
It was all about timing
and when the season came,
the carpenter built a guitar,
the lunatic wrote a memoir,
and the poet only wrote masterpieces after countless hours in a bar.

There was a student, an architect, and an engineer
and they all dreamt of freedom
from the chains of class, work, or the past
They were not unique in their envy
and were assigned to design a levy
that would hold water for the town
enough to quench rich thirst
and enough to drown

The architect sent the design first,
The engineer built a key like a curse
to unlock the levy upon request
the student observed, but imprisoned by impatience, could not rest
thought there was freedom in approval
so pridefully, he pulled
he stood on a hill ready for renewal
had studied the design of the levy and all of its features
had built a key, better than his teacher's
unlocked the levy and washed out the town
but absorbed in his plan, he forgot to warn the (one) man
and watched how even ideas drown