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May 2020 · 249
Sawdust
Pete May 2020
“There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
Its not dark yet, but it’s getting there”. – Bob Dylan
.
A pair of die is tossed across a plywood-table.
It’s oak-veneer of creamy grain glisters with light
Which falls crummy, like dandruff from naked bulbs
That are illumined by a hand that screws;
There is no switch.
The flick of that wrist charms those die into snake eyes.
And so, the two-fold trick erupts our opposites on top
Of the laminated universe. The stones have settled.

You can smell the ignited, paper wick
Of a well-packed cigarette
But none of the sweet leaf which follows.
The virtue of our space is that
The substance is snuffed out.

No more panache with death-
Wish; just sadness fumbling with toilet
Paper, because tissues got expensive.
Pretty quick the crown of that nose chafes
Against the single-ply and specks of skin
Suspend themselves in oddly solar
Bathroom light. But the cells reform so quick;
The cartilage is solid like the trunks of effusive,
Sappy trees that create a sympathetic prison.
Soon, apathetic winter comes to ****
The ornaments obscuring
A depthless forest.

So stripped of foliage, an ascetic, wintry oak
Must look inside itself.
The anatomy of tree
As annulated grain,
Is kept concealed; flat circles. marking. years.
It sees Prospero’s Ariel and Carlotta’s Madeleine.
They’re gagged, trapped in the trunk
And point outside the Vertigo of time –
Inside the television – to “total flow” –  
(Where Scottie drools catatonically)
To spotless light, in evergreen rooms
That are built of such better pulp.

..

Conspicuous are characters around here.
It seems that silver dollars stack ten to a word
Of which so many do plague these matted
And miserly phrases.
Intelligent, it isn’t.  Green looks blue;
Intelligence is stupid. It does not sound
Like anything and means much less.
No, they’re hopeful to be musical or
Umbilical; like, connected to the harmonic
Mother who’s just now gestating an utterance
For life or death. Whichever side
Of the soil you prefer.

Most folks used to hedge their bets on both
But eternity is out, the moment is in.
Like Jesus Christ it’s difficult to stay
With the latest
Transcendental style.  
Friction atomizes faith’s tension ‘till
Belief systems are burned out.

The Library of Babel is in flames.
The ash falls and frosts the boughs
Of culture’s mangey oak.

That tree, was just struck by the zeitgeist’s lightning.
And furiously, so furiously our year’s snow is falling,
On all the breathing; all the sleeping,
Whom sawing logs are situated in the worst, possible
S(lumber).


I saw dust, and it looked like me.
I am the 3rd Adam.
I am a-bomb.
And I will deliver us.

Sawdust

— The End —