Wednesday, February 10, 2010

High Water


When a river overflows its banks,
it scours the landscape like a thief
and carries away what it does not own.

When my desires overflow my needs,
I become a river of selfishness
drowning any thought of others.

When my needs overflow my desires,
I become a dry valley with no memory
of how I should go about praying for rain.

1 comment:

Dr. Mike said...

Nijinsky Redux

Those who live beside the Ohio
Know how salt reclaims us
By hand slap of solid water
Knocking everything off base;
As do those who live beside
The Yangtze, that serpent’s tail
In China, that engorges silt
And then shrinks down
To a bitter sting,

Where may we touch down?
Where may we touch down?

Leaping broadband
From embodiment
Of muscular virility
To insane asylum,
Each ab pumped &
Hazing the future,
Confined to a box
Within a box, he convulses
Scribbling about a dire
Future: no space for flying
And flying across the stage;
No stage but a platform
Riding high surf
Into the madness.

Where may we touch down?

Continents rumble &
Threaten to snap off,
To join that island of trash
That will not dissolve back
Into an ocean warming
Up, crusts of bread cracking off
As land masses, all migration
Haywire, the rhumba wobble
Of the planet sloughing off
Its protective eggshell
That becalmed the nebula.

Where may we touch down?

[Disposable Poem February 10, 2010]
Dr. Mike