Our interim swimmer The flotsam of a dreamer Will drift and shrug on whatever log Drifts and shrugs along. 5 Among warm fantasies of existence He'll pip himself a prince Or surmise a wisp a whip Coiling angrily at his hip, His own dark, androgynous 10 Urges to nip and sharply shape And torture into consciousness Speech where a beast would gape. Forgetting in the momentarily kind Regard or design of a cumulus cloud 15 And friendly D vitamin sunshine How a taut tiger might lie supine Between the shadow and the visible He considered that nature and nurture Had made him of all things the richer. 20 The circumlocution of the clouds Said nothing to him; of this he was proud. He thought: to be awake but unaware, To not be subject to thought's despair Or consciousness' superstitious care 25 That inscribes the history of the tribe Into every member's singular side -- a Rotary Club tattoo, the gestural Cool of a Crip or Blood's hand signal That had DNA for its original-- 30 Is to give up or resign Your part in the human sublime, To abandon the spiral nadir Of accomplishment's stair To the deterioration of clumsy Time 35 Dirtying suavity's shine. A barracuda acting as it was told Skirled to the surface, garish and bold. He thought thinking was almost all. He thought that since the fall 40 From preconscious One Into the active energy of Become That History and all of her messes Devolved to individual "bless yous," And the scale that shows this depth 45 Can be reeled off in a breath By any mammal whose consciousness Swims livelier than a fish. From a wet and worsted pocket, With an uncareful, watery shift, 50 He brought a palmed mouth organ out. And he thought as he floated there Between ecstasy and despair Between the sweet green-glowing swells Of his mild Cape Hatteras hell 55 That the shirring, Shelleyan lute Could be plucked only to confute The rare, the rightful argument That evolution in the docks presents: That obscurity obstinate and disguise 60 Are designed by chance to make us wise And lift us by gimmicks to Eternity On whose verities we may spy. By the regularity of genital function By the pageant of reproduction 65 We place opportune or Platonic kisses On wicked lips or wicked wishes And spurt our progeny toward Heaven's swoon, And like the tiger we sleep at noon.
From the collection "The Sword Inside"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.