LAMENTATIONS

by David Eide

A certain derangement occurs on a yearly cycle in the city of his truest being. When it happens the poet studies so he will be the first to master the broken world. The sky feels material. The world flows without sense. The world is providing a service for the poet and he backs away from the crazed role he was prepared to enter. As the city goes crazy, the poet gets compact. He looks for the marvelous that prods people through the streets. Sudden beauty will not burst from their fingers. Iron and glass has made them mimic the fantasies of others. The poet sees a perfect future fade away but rejoices that he will have to work for reality.

There are diversions, sweet diversions poet! There is a passion in this city, games, details to be worked out, structure to reveal, balls in the air, dogs barking, women laughing, music and dancing. There is a thought that hangs on the rotation of the planet and it is carried out into deep space.

Ah, to live in an inventive land. Some ranting I hear disturbs my sleep. The grind and roar of your machines chokes the continuity of my dreams. The poet watches bums piss in the gutter and shake their fist to declare that they have rights. Acids that eat life constituency reaches unimaginable places. Men walk between perpendicular lines from the center to the Bay.

"Poet, why would you throw your careful words against the ruthless world?"

"It's what I catch on the rebound that determines my art."

"So, you've given up the idea that your words will save the world?"

"Yes, but the world still needs to be saved."

"Oh poet, it's only saved when it perceives that beyond it are the designs for the imagination."

"I fear the wiles of a rotten world. I suffer when I see great people captured by perceptions they haven't learned how to transform."