DUCK TAILS
Bottoms up
Mallards in pond
Behind the Court of Appeals
Head first
Upside down
Orange webbed legs paddle
Duck eyes
Peering through algae
Beaks nibbling submarine
morsels
Concentric waves
Surround their backsides
Viewed through branches of
Rose Mallow
Bottoms down
Heads up for air
This is your Nature and mine
IT IS FINISHED
My space suit is my space ship
disconnected independent of all
I gestate
in the
womb of infinite space
surrounded by innumerable stars
of which I am the brightest celebrity
I float
connecting
the twinkling dots
with abstract strands of alienated thought
encasing me in technology
I am eternally being born
I am eternally gestating
everything has been provided for me
no need
to see
hear taste touch smell
no need to think or feel
it has all been done for me
it is finished
perfectly and completely controlled
I have achieved Selfhood at last
this is what I wanted all along
this is what I was destined for
this is what I Am
HOME BODIES
Small countries have less people to command.
Although they have machines to get things done,
They choose to do all of their work by hand.
These people study death and stay at home;
Their boats and carriages rust in their yards;
Their weapons gather dust on armories’ shelves.
Their body language speaks instead of words.
Content to be no more than what they are,
They don’t compare their neighbors to themselves.
They don’t believe the news that they have heard.
Though dogs may bark and cocks may strut and crow,
They don’t complain or seek to peek and pry.
How can they know what others seem to know?
How can they see with someone else’s eyes?
REMAINDER
I dreamed that Science would relieve my pain;
And through the weary night I tossed and turned,
Tormented by utopian concerns
To satisfy all cravings in my brain—
Surmount the bounds of space and time and strain
With brave new breakthroughs of Technology:
When suddenly, all Nature turned on me
The elements I thought that I had tamed!
Consumed with fire, choked in a watery grave,
By earth’s upheavals torn, I gasped for breath;
As every atom of which these were made
But in the twisted ruins of my toys,
Compassion stood, of all things undestroyed.
INDEPENDENCE DAY
I could break my spine,
Looking up at the sky--
But to what avail?
No more Heaven is there,
Than when I look down
At this world on the ground.
Not everyone knows
This truth, I suppose:
My countrymen drain
Their fossils, and strain
To evolve as a race
That commands outer space.
Would they but explore
“In the deep heart‘s core,”
They could see the whole
earth
They give such slight worth
Revealed in bright rays
Each Independence Day.
For down would be up,
And bottom be top--
All things being due
To one’s own point of view,
That sees low or high
From where its thought lies.
The shock might be such
To tax overmuch
Their self esteem, though,
And cause them to glow
With colors more true
Than red, white and blue.
