– Steve Mueske –
green like the word Go! : the artichoke’s
muscled tongue : this sensuous life among insects :
all five kingdoms teeming, animate
as a little bird doing the slough grass fandango :
bodhi svaha! : rain fills the funky canvas awning :
funky awning flips the rainwater off : a rhythmic thing
this dance, this flip and tumble of a pop can
in a breeze : eurhythmic feet scudding dirt
outside the Biffy : 2 AM : an obese man inside
wailing the GI Blues : Elvis in the building
which proves, of course, that joy lives
among us disguised as disco : beauty, too
but she’s changed her name to cruel
and makes a living designing miniatures
for the museum of broken things : photographs
of stitched lips reduced to the size of stamps :
darlings, I tell you the truth, you were born
with cauls of static: novas, novitiates
to the wine-dark waves of Aunt B’s hair :
Lon Chaney creeping up castle stairs :
700 channels of metaphysicians dreaming
of butterflies : you hear geese and think
barnacle tree, hear good and think god, knowing
as Scientists and Marionettes, LLP, know
all things, at base, are strings : truth is
the world has fewer mysteries now that the wind
has started composing again : if asked, the leaves
would tell you they are bored to death with fugues &
only applaud out of duty : everyone knows
Gilligan’s dead & Ginger looks like an elephant's
knee : the facts are : hydrogen sits on oxygen
at 104.5 degrees : one degree more or less
and there’d be no water : no old gods rising
out of primordial chaos to create order : the facts
are : there is more dark matter than matter :
there is no beginning : no end : there must
have been a beginning : of a possible 14 dimensions
we know only three : 125 million receptors
and still we see only a small spectrum of light :
after red, a hum and a flicker means...