| C. Marcus Parr USA Mute Poet Mathematics is true. 2 plus 6 is 8 & immutable. Objects are true: my shoe, that bed, this hotel. Words are symbols to a world, Writing presumes verity. No blinking, no hedging, just projection of sensibilities. Death is the truth, life is the truth. To touch the truth is to suffer, To love is to be blessed by it. What do we say to the mute poet whose eyes witness this daily ritual, who bathes in a kind of cultural hell? The poet would speak the truth if he could overcome paralysis but his principles are too extreme. He cannot achieve them; no one can. He is the mute poet. He commits the sin of silence, suffering without words. He observes without comment, judges without relevance. He has abandoned all hope to the sleepless dream of life. Museum His pathology floats in a bottle.
Our apologies, Father,
pickled like an insect in amber.
It is a dream, your being here:
floating in formaldehyde,
preserved beside another alcoholic
reliquary—Mother, suspended,
embryo of improvident potential.
And on the shelf, a contribution
to prolonged adolescence:
"Brother" braided in calligraphy.
Like gawkers at an accident
we observe the irony and move on
to our own exhibition.
Cellars of Bosnia There is the Unspeakable about which you conduct an internal dialogue to lessen the horror or to pour out the bilious pain to which you awaken every day cursing the cruelty of a God who will not take you mercilessly in your sleep or relieve you of the fetid memory of brutes. previous publication © All Copyright, 2000, C.
Marcus Parr. |