Poem: “Tea with the Deconstructionist” 2014
Let’s read War and Peace,
something dreadfully Russian.
Let’s impale ourselves on dead men’s words
And shake the world apart with our sorrows.
We can chart out bloodlines
With no beginning or end,
Make tablature for the songs
Of martyrs and devils —
How they morph and change and…disconnect.
It will be a book club of dysmorphia,
Focusing in on the misshaped ears of those who can’t listen,
The Archimedes spiral defective,
The tongue caught in the mouth,
The story lost on waves of mischance…
Those family trees, we’ll hang names on them.
How many echoes of a man can wear the same name
Like a coat with pockets full of sand?
Let’s read War and Peace
So that one day,
We too can understand…
We’ll understand that the stakes we lie dead upon
Were made of illusions
Carved by restless ancient hands
And foolishly placed to mark words with no meaning
Documented by learned scribes.
We’ll have discussions in our cozy labyrinth
About how we can escape but choose not to
Because restraint is more posh
Than any hasty flight to the sun.
We’ll talk about how OUR wings are not made of
Meltable material.
No, no, they’re sturdy, durable, metal, medieval,
So heavy, in fact, they keep us from flight
But not from discussions,
Discourses,
Dialogues,
About if we could fly,
Where we would go
And how we’d always make sure
Not to fly too high.
