LAMENTATIONS 

Cracks and fissures; a sad allure through the body of the community. "Ah people learn what is strong and weak in yourselves!"

He stares into all sizable fissures and is ashamed that the world he knows has collapsed. He walks the full measure of the fissure, his mind filled with conflicts that desire some pleasant dream.

When will the endless reading stop, and reality, the thing itself appear to stagger you, the poet, from your dumb lethargy? There is an unhappy and unending roll of voices that come through untended rows of books speaking to the ropes that pull him through the streets and buildings as though there is beauty or love on the other side. There is no sun to the sea; flowers are on the tip of the porpoise slanting through the dark and undulating waves.

He will stop his senseless reading and go to where the people are and efface himself, asking them to act on his naivete and communicate unspoken things.

What foolish philosophy has he been reading of late? A man who believes in nothing but the strange contents of his own brain. Yes, someone protected who the poet can disdain and drive his despair out of him

He sees in the street, the men who despise books. He has passed through them and he owes something to them. Is there not an aspect in the poet that despises books?

Ah, predictable men, don't you realize that your potential is like electricity? It is evident for thousands and millions of years in nature before it is taken up and used to discharge the human potential. Predictable men, light and circuitry demand your attention! Don't become the slaves of those who do not despise books. He leaves the street with one final thought. "Don't circles and structures protect me from you the predictable ones? Or am I simply having evil thoughts?"

The poet, fascinated by stories that float to him in the air in fragments, is confused by the density of stories. Why are the people in this moderate city purging themselves of something awful? Is it something the city has given them?

They no longer read about the lives of travelers and demand that their life, that thing, is celebrated above all the other lives, even above the lives of saints.

Compression of stories swirl above the city where the poet stares; he stares into the noontime sun at the intersection of fine restaurant’s and people stop to remind him that he looks foolish looking up at the clouds. "The birds are taking away elements of the story to some place I am visualizing. I hear the hear of the bird and feel the wind on its wing."

The crowds still pester him, so he turns to them. "I will gather you all up, I will gather you and allow you to dance in my imagination. She who creates me is a jealous creature. She who creates me will measure you fully and make your story fully her own. Your stories will run downward through my soul lighting me with a delightful burden. Your stories will race from one and of my mind to the other and find the secret interstices. But my burden will bring every piece of ore to the surface and demand an assay. Don’t you understand the patience I must cultivate for the sake of your souls?

© 2001 David Eide. All rights reserved.