Coming into Focus

 

Coming into Focus 60 x 60 cm mixed media - available -

QIANA                       

                                                                          A lightweight

                                                               manmade fiber chemically classed

                                                                            as nylon.

                                                                                    THE RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY

After the confusion is packed away—

precipitated by an Erik Rohmer girl  

blessed with the morals of late antiquity, say,

and bitter little pouches beneath

her eyes—and we ship it off like toxic waste

to a needy, cash-poor country

in equatorial Africa, we learn

to stretch our muscles in new ways,

in new words. The garden seems fresher then,

the Philosopher takes his pleasure calmly

and the Poet takes dictation calmly, and we take a break

from the daily idiocy, which sounds like a newspaper

and sometimes is, the colors astoundingly attentive

to our needs, like lovers, like lovers who really love us,

though no one in her right mind could possibly love me

nor you, for that matter, sorry, nor him nor her,

apologies, I mean come on is anyone really lovable

I think Ann Carson admitted in the Paris Review

that she’s a monster, that all of us are monsters

which is exactly what you might expect a classics professor/modernist poet

to say, that is, bronze age fatalism plus Avant-garde

pessimism equals: it doesn’t matter what and how

much we sacrifice to the gods our blue print

is left unaltered, that is, human beings

are excellent at making poems, pictures, bombs

and we can be so so so beautiful

but as far as living life goes, well, we’re pretty much

fuck ups, often getting stuck on issues such as

what would you do if all of your shirts were

made of nylon? There you are, sweating in the high school gym

dancing to ELO, the Bee Gees, almost happy. Everything

glistening, like ice, like a nylon shirt, like a headache

in the south of France—not enough bread, sweetie, or cheese— and I  

hadn’t a sou, and there’s hardly a fate worse than being hungry   

and sou-less in France, and because the old men were smoking their little

cigars in the 2nd class waiting room, laughing, having a hell of a good time.