Poetry
Issue #14
Past Point
As a philosopher once said...
life is lived forwards
yet understood backwards,
like the mirror image of
the mirror image of
a man staring at the back of his head.
casting shadows
like the manifold representation
of the same person,
stressing the past…past the point;
pointless
like reading from a cookbook
to a man who is hungry.
we are not fictions
formed ready
actions chosen
determine character,
like nodding with the crowd
as the outcast is lynched
confusing the contradiction
for a synthesis
(man-made?)
like making a leap
belief is the springboard,
unlike reading the last page first.
the history of man
takes the man out of himself
understanding the past
past reason itself
like a crab crawling sideways
clicking claws at progress
ignoring the question
(can the past present future?)
our history is brain lodged
sprayed
the
on
wall
like the bullet that makes most sense,
it follows logically.
i am destiny
scythe-tongued harvester
heads roll under the influence
sacrificing self
for the art of the future
like being misunderstood
a mesh of cliché
i am past morality.
i am the limit of my world (i do not exist?)
infinite boundless
unable to step outside
because what really matters
is what we can only be silent about...
like the ancients tying tablets of lead
round the knees of gods
fine-spun thread,
the chain of causation has a chink.
now if Shakespeare and Byron possessed
80,000 words in all
the future genius-poet
shall in every minute
possess 80,000,000,000 words squared
like leasing life from exhaustion
tripping off the tongue
like drug-induced variations
dissolving art into a new and paradoxical nirvana
like creating nothing
I write nihil
on everything that has been done before.
the unconscious is structured as language
trying to express
associated ties
meaningful
like the paralysed monkey
sitting by the mirror
imagining the symbolic which now becomes real
like a silent movie,
images without sound
a burden,
like atlas deceived
becoming apparent in the balance.
At any street corner
the feeling of absurdity can strike any man
in the face,
like the punch line of a long-forgotten joke suddenly making sense
like the tramp quoting Hamlet,
crouching in the corner huddled in piss,
like a lack of oxygen
which sends you delirious
it’s not serious anymore
like a poster of Einstein’s
mocking tongue poked out.
Adam Picot