Where and when and what
are we? The modern gave up
its ghost to the post and the
avant-garde failed to haunt
hard enough to stay. So
what do you say we do
now? Can it be true that
we have been cowed into
our memories? Our sweet,
bready nostalgia, only giving
more, more gas. There must
be a new food that can claim
the mantle of true food, a good
of a different good that handles
the times with the aplomb of long-
past, over-sweated rhymes. Snakes
do not eat their tails. Why must
we? For me, I see the mountain
against the sky and I see symbol
symbiosis. And this is no relativity.
This is a general weary theory,
a near the clearing clarity that
spreads meadow where now
there is dirt. A meadow in
the mind is worth a million
bushels of smaller bushels.
Mass nicker knacking knocked
the wind out of the sales.
Revenue ain't what is used to
be. Net income and finance talk,
this is our new beanstalk. If you're
paying for attention you've already
lost every self you could've had.
But it's not about selves anymore.
It's not even about shelves. This
updated modern is contemporary
with language's ebb and flow, the
way the words flower and tower
and cower and spray the excess power
into voids. Avoid the sensation of
sensation, that is like a presentation:
useless, except to the presenter. What
we are talking about is conversation.
Talking about talking about talking
about. Yes, it will smell repetitive.
Just the way repetitive feels on the tongue.
It's back and forth, but not like an old
saw. More like a forest or a glorious
mountain, speaking like the trees
speak with the clouds: we see each other,
and sometimes, we cover for each other,
and the rest of the time, we feed each
other pictures and waters that resound
and respond and become resplendent,
like the world when it's seen through
the eyes of someone else's eyes. The eye
in the eye. To be clear these eyes require
other eyes. Slow down enough to
go fast. Together. To gather your
selves together as a series of parallel
selves, shelfless, filled with the nooks
that are made when they are seen
by another person's looks.
Roman Ryan 