The following two poems explore the human need to express everything we experience and the impossibility of absolute correspondence between lived experience and our descriptions.  I wonder why we cannot contain the purity of experience in ourselves without exchanging it for the artificial-reality of words and symbols. Wouldn’t it be better to leave the flux to itself while we join in its silent (nonverbal) dance in an ahistorical frenzy? For what are our conversations but a miniature-history of the world and our lives? Must mankind be forever trapped in the webs of a descriptive situation? What’s the need to define place, time, mood, thoughts, hopes and expectations?

 

 

Is life too great for anyone to bear alone that we must reduce its intensity and infinity to the limited bounds and finiteness of language? 

 

If we cease to communicate (purge) life could we die from an overdose of life itself?

 

 

 

 

These are the dry leaves of the 21^st century
Falling upon our feet that coil
A path as snakes on a dune of sand

These are the subway noises
Under the surface of our routine
Where are our shouts of ecstasy?

These are the ripples of passion
Unborn embrace of earthly bliss
We are one catastrophe away from paradise

These are the memoirs of all power-lines
Showering us with light of illusion
Approaching twilight for today’s relics 

These are the end-products of pleasure
Fascination with the wonders of plastic
And a what-for question left unanswered

 These are the dry days of the 21^st century

 

 

 

 Fetch me nature’s product in a plastic bag
While this blue-eyed kid stares at me
As I dance to the melody of pure purposelessness 

 Talk to me about an Asian photograph
While this train takes me to your hometown
As I write lines of life’s ineffability

Promise me there is a higher plan
While I grow old with laughter
As I adjust my twisted underwear

Abandon me for taking the trivial for the profound
While the grass is still wet outside
As I swear life’s grandeur is best unexpressed