NOT IN AN ETHER NOR THE AIR

Suppose, Antonio,
suppose every conceivable idea exists,
has always existed out there,
unconsigned, adrift,
almost impassively eliciting connection
in a mode of its own ---
not undulation, not quite convection nor transfusion.

Suppose, Antonio,
suppose that fluttering just now among your neurons
was some such.

Suppose it was Einsteinian!

Was Machiavellian!

Was infantile.

It may recur.

© Oliver Rice

OR THE GAZE OF A SAINT

       All language is a set of symbols whose

       use among its speakers assumes a

       shared past.       Jorge Luis Borges


Irrevocably, perhaps inevitably, yes,

a mode of belonging.
Of explaining why choices have such long memories.

Of articulating rumors from the undermind,
assisting the left hand in tutoring the right,
depicting a face metaphysically bruised.

Of remembering Earth,
telling it goodbye.

Saying what a palette or an oboe cannot.

                                                ---

But formidably, perhaps fortuitously, no,

otherwise falls short of the world.
Of the nuances of anthropology.

Of translating the crickets, the gargoyles,
small glittering things,
the script of a tea ceremony.

The idiom of the tabula rasa,
fantasies of musculature.

Portraying a culmination of self.

© Oliver Rice