Project Tapestry
Copyright 2000 e. blakemore
(Tapestry threads)
I have a damaged bard's gene...
1.
I have a damaged bard's gene.
I discovered it when these pointless images
forced themselves into my sleep.
I tried to kill it
with drink, with drugs, with a thousand deaths
from a deficit culture.
A word as good as a gun
to put an end to sense, the rational trap.
I have been damaged
by freight trains fraught with meaning,
loaded with consumer electronics
somewhere:
the ground is a ship in Norway.
2.
I never learned the system of trees and animals
never the code that makes a poem a sooth.
A damaged language that hasn’t the time to digest
the culture it's devoured,
This is what I have to work with —
a system of mirrors
and a system of angers.
Trapped within, consumed by systems
that have no organic origin,
and experts who know that the origins
themselves have no meanings. To learn
to edit to rewrite to rework to remake
to mar to score to detest to defect.
Death has many trademarks —
too many people, who die, who kill, who fall
into categories, or into the literal pits.
(song from a version of china)