by me!
“Lake” and “If”
First posted by Davidrogersbooks September 10, 2020
IF
If he knew he’d be dead by dark
Tolstoy supposedly said he’d keep
plowing which proves either
he really liked to plow or else
he was a bit off that day and I think
it must be the latter because
no sane human likes to plow that much
unless you mean the Shakespearean
metaphorical kind of plowing
but Ell Tee was way too uptight
for that sort of language
and not that imaginative
but if I were cursed with knowledge
of my own imminent demise
I’d find a hot metaphor
and have a wild time and get
a revolver to defend
myself just in case I’m slated to die
at the hands of a jealous lover
whose girlfriend I’ve never met
much less flirted with or cultivated
in any way and I know I’d probably
end up being shot with my own
weapon because as the Greeks
figured out a long time ago
that’s how these things usually end
nobody escapes irony
but still I say it’s best
to go down fighting or
polishing your weapon or being
metaphorical or doing anything
that counts as honest rebellion
–David Rogers
Lake
Large bodies of water attract you
because their immensity confirms suspicions
regarding your own relative size: horizons
are never straight
since time is round
and space is not flat, lying as it must
on the uneven bottom of that great lake
whose coastline has never been accurately
mapped: the fractal nature of the coast itself
is partly responsible, though by my calculation
a map at least twice as big as the lake
and filled with simulated water is necessary
to approximate the pattern pebbles make
on sand: such a map will fit only in
the basement of the museum where in winter
the curator will skate on the frozen
simulation, ostensibly to measure
effects of tidal forces on simulated ice
but really to hear how skates sound
and breezes flutter her skirt and brandy
makes her toes warm: humanity has gotten
things wrong at every turn: the world is not flat
nor quite round nor at the center of whatever
universe it happens to be in at this moment:
god never existed: dinosaurs upstairs glance
at a sky that always just now begins to rain fire
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