Polled poetry.
In the flowering dogwood was Parmenides,
The fledgling thus delivering his panegyric song
To the empyrean he perceived, to his sky,
Until a bolt of summer lightning struck him dead;
The dogwood was enveloped in flame,
And became a pile of ashes, as did young Parmenides:
Goodbye friend, and goodbye to your
Sky, and song, and song of sky!
From this point I suffered most acutely
The sense of a great loss,
But could not account for which loss was the greatest loss:
Was it singing, young, downy Parmenides; or
The singing itself; or the flowers of
The dogwood; or the flowering dogwood; or
The song among the flowering dogwood;
Or the bleary pastelled empyrean to which
Young Parmenides sang; or perhaps
All of this, all of it, for which no single word exists?
And as of that I was lost in
The vagueness of my own loss;
I cried for I knew not what, and for everything,
Thenceforth.
My grief, through accretions, was infinity;
Everything existed as prelude to its own loss,
And I evolved thought no further; no more
Could I cry for anything but grief itself
Which in that moment became the only
Recognizable truth; and I realized all truth
Is inexplicable; only it is more obvious
In vague truths such as these.
A sense of labor under Locke’s
prescribed value theory overcame me,
And then waned, until I shot into the blue;
I was propelled into the empyrean, gone, or
Perhaps struck by lightning,
Becoming fire,
Becoming ash.
Fuck your philosophy, a songbird is dead.
Death is the ever-flowering thought blooming
Past the limits of our understanding.
Poll What do you think of this poem in an easy poll setting?
The fledgling thus delivering his panegyric song
To the empyrean he perceived, to his sky,
Until a bolt of summer lightning struck him dead;
The dogwood was enveloped in flame,
And became a pile of ashes, as did young Parmenides:
Goodbye friend, and goodbye to your
Sky, and song, and song of sky!
From this point I suffered most acutely
The sense of a great loss,
But could not account for which loss was the greatest loss:
Was it singing, young, downy Parmenides; or
The singing itself; or the flowers of
The dogwood; or the flowering dogwood; or
The song among the flowering dogwood;
Or the bleary pastelled empyrean to which
Young Parmenides sang; or perhaps
All of this, all of it, for which no single word exists?
And as of that I was lost in
The vagueness of my own loss;
I cried for I knew not what, and for everything,
Thenceforth.
My grief, through accretions, was infinity;
Everything existed as prelude to its own loss,
And I evolved thought no further; no more
Could I cry for anything but grief itself
Which in that moment became the only
Recognizable truth; and I realized all truth
Is inexplicable; only it is more obvious
In vague truths such as these.
A sense of labor under Locke’s
prescribed value theory overcame me,
And then waned, until I shot into the blue;
I was propelled into the empyrean, gone, or
Perhaps struck by lightning,
Becoming fire,
Becoming ash.
Fuck your philosophy, a songbird is dead.
Death is the ever-flowering thought blooming
Past the limits of our understanding.
Poll What do you think of this poem in an easy poll setting?