Five Poems
Jeu No. 34 (Silk Road Memories)
Aleph! I would begin
here, making morning
coffee as an alien.
I have much empathy
for my french press, dear
glass and steel vessel.
We speak to each
other through antennae
invisible to the naked
eye, it’s the psychic
thing I told you about
once, long time ago.
So everything has
a soul? Yes, a great soul
overarches all things.
Things said, things
felt, picked up, palpated,
et cetera. I said all
and I meant it, even
though there is nothing
too serious to joke of.
Jeu No. 30 (Lovers)
There’s a hair across your lip and it makes you
sad, like nothing fun will ever happen again...
just because the wedding is delayed, you feel
like it’s been cancelled? No chance! Or choice
in the matter, really, the unity of spirit & matter
is all preordained. In fact, time isn’t even really
passing by. We’re waiting like now isn’t Now.
Jeu No. 160
Let’s just pick up where we left off, if that’s possible.
In the intervening period, everything has become else.
Suffice to say, unless you have the emerald tablet,
you cannot catch a fly in midair without crushing it,
and nobody will hold onto the necessary chinoiserie
to put new plants shoulder to shoulder with an old lamp.
This is a hot ticket concept. If you don’t believe soon
it will be gone. If you don’t believe now, that’s okay.
Jeu No. 40
Magnetism, the stars, all other
occult accidents, they charm
us, they seduce us, turn our eyes
to the circle whose center is nowhere,
or everywhere, that whole thing.
Certain stones play in high spheres.
You can’t tell me why but you can
know why, and that’s okay. I do too.
It doesn’t need to be said out loud.
It’s not possible anyway. It’s better
to tell a joke or sing a song if we want
to pass the time given... please don’t
get me started on what’s passing,
or if anything is! Again, unspeakable.
Jeu No. 47 (Battle or Pretend)
Your mana is showing in spurious parallel to other
concepts of life force, energy, spirits that possess
bodies they move around in “the world.” As we see
further into the past and future, the tree meets earth
or explodes into the sky depending on perspective.
In any case, it is inarguably there, and is extended.
Don’t act like man is not the measure of all things.
That is a revolutionary statement, and a lie as well,
but why should the truth be so important? It’s not
my idea, just one that I often play my games with.
∩
Sam Robinson publishes regularly at sunworship.substack.com. He just released a new collection, AT LAST GLACIAL MAXIMUM, available now from Creative Writing Department.