ONE MONTH

24


Is there a will
to beauty? Does the
ear demand compassion?
Does beauty in horses
arise from a sexual
attraction to power?
What form of living
detracts least from
the others? Do diagonals
replicate an ecology
of resistance? Another
life might be too
many, right? Can
thought avail itself
of the eye’s weaknesses?
Do images necessitate
a force toward the eventual
obliteration of difference?
If religion and logic
are mutually exclusive
shouldn’t we rid ourselves
of them both? Are we
doomed to love
what entertains us?
Are fingerprints our
initial admissions
of guilt? What surface
doesn’t implicate only
another inexhaustible
depth? If we move fast
enough in arbitrary
directions will we cease
to appear? Is gravity
that mute vector that
explains all else?
How ugly can an
organ of pleasure
be? Do you still
fear words? This ninety
degree angle at the corner
of the page doesn’t lead
to the murder inherent
in hierarchical structures
does it? What is the
“earth” made of? How
often have you wished
to slough the body’s
nerve sleeve? Can
space exist without
the coterminous
abstraction of time?
Doesn’t the word
“man” begin to strike
you as being just
a little humiliating?
Does the occurrence
of clouds allow
metaphor’s genesis in
the “primitive” mind?
Does every prize fail
by dint of redundancy?
Is help finally on
the way or have we
ceased to need it?


25


Is subjectivity subject
to ridicule? Do molecules
know better the benefits
of community? Are
questions merely the effect
of being a thing among
things? Where is light
more cinematic than on
the fading vertical face
of the house across
the street at five o’clock?
Is the location of Earth’s
orbit partly responsible
for nostalgia? How is it
that certain animals seem
always to desire what
haphazard affection we
can muster upon arriving
home? When is this
poem best suited
to history? Why do
the trees stand for all
our conjecture? Carry
this fulsome parcel
of energy past its humble
origins, will you? Can’t
dusk trouble us a little
more in this dingy epoch
of bulbs? Did you ever
find your answer in
a song for devout
“primitives” whose
language you had no
way of deciphering?
What is less important
than thought? How has
each name become razed
from the topography
of the epileptic’s brain?
Is it dark yet? Have your
eyes adjusted? Does
the pestle grind away
at your resolve? Do you
grow hearts like a shark
loses teeth or need three
like an octopus? I
wonder what the news
will hate tonight? Was
the corpse of the Chinese
prisoner pliant in the hands
of the sculptor? Why
can I not leave my body
to the animals of the field?
Will night’s chill erase
the tediousness of our
concerns? Join me for
a walk into the already
opening horizon, won’t
you? How come I have
ceased breathing in
normal intervals? Who
is the you you prefer
to leave behind? Will
it disturb us too
radically to go back
to an existence free
from the sins incurred
by agriculture?