Respites in the Demands of Sensation
Advice in the Form of Confusion
by Margot Schilpp, from Civil Twilight
I have been watching the young
struggle through their daily lives
and waste the flesh we all remember
and I have seen the gardens they shine
their leaves in, the kind invented
by distraction and devices that run
on little lithium ion batteries, flat
disks that power music and voice
into strong tremble and staccato chain
that barrels into the angelic orders
we raise our heads to see, or hope
to see, but never do, for they have
sprung into louder volumes and faster
rhythms that disorient and confuse.
There are sounds we can no longer
hear, at our age, and we don't want
anymore to know what we left
behind on that sill or under
that abbreviated sun. I can't know
wry substitutions. I can't hear breath
embrace five-minutes-ago or tomorrow
and there must be a word for that,
but I don't know it. I know the sound
of thinking a hard whistle into the lung.
I know the shape of houndstooth
and the hang of each tag's pricing
itself out of so many's reach.
I swoon and recoil at the tresses blowing
in an arbor without glow
or flame. These are reprieves. Respites
in the demands of sensation
and flow. Know this: you can you can
you can you can you can.
See also:
- Sweet 3.3
- "Wangechi Mutu: The End of eating Everything," Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, September 16 to November 30, 2014