The Backwards Poet

The poets rhyme keeping time
to a pace for the chase
chance of being beat
with a lickitly-split spotting
of a hippty-hop don’t
stop the feet keeping time
askew a stone starting
two ask who these
hedge walking wonders are?

And there are moments where we have had to stop and wonder. How is it that we know this place upon our first arriving? Hypothetical hyper-domes of inter-dimensional queries. But from before. Place our arriving first, we know how, that upon this time, it is. And again, but after the before or perhaps so far before the before that it feels like after. That we place this time first upon how it is arriving. And it is always arriving. Differently. And I stop to wonder if wonder be-wonders itself with change. Or is wondering the very question mark hanging us bubbled. On the bottom looking up. The orbicular sky fills with passing lights.

I experience déjà vu as though the protected bubble of time has been popped by a time-bandit hoovering around with a needle point joyfully awaiting his next opportune burst. Curious, I never realized I associated this bandit of mine as a he- a little he forest gnome sucking on some licorice root and smacking his gums with a bit of attitude til finding another mischievous moment to stun. A moment I will remember. By some fragment of fiction or another fact free-floating in the air. One that will bring the programed, “i must have been here before” to the surface. The pre-thought re-thinking itself as, “was it in a dream?” And I search on in the skies forgetting why the question is important, or for that matter, what the question even is. But, when I remember. I write down my dreams. And now with enough remembering I have record. And proof. Of what? The he gnome? Sadly he has yet to show his bearded face in the flesh. He must belong to another way. His way is a ways off mine (although I am pretty sure he hangs out just over my right shoulder). There is no proof of the unexplainable, undefinable, immovable moving movie director planting props in our awareness so that we stumble upon them poignantly, causing us to point around with an evolving finger looking for the moon.

Yet somehow we’ve managed proof of the moon, and our finger (or at least some of us have), and certainly there are props we trip up on along the way. For the sake of not spinning out on some abracadabra fabra-dimensional point I am going to keep my finger attached and entreaty bluntness. Sowing the seeds of our future understanding I believe the creative act to be a type of self fulfilling fortune telling. Following the curiosity of self, we dance, draw, sing, run, and write our ways to the creative edge. Once there, we will know, for the symphonious sound of synchronicity bellows from the chasms mouth.

The creative act, self-planted and watered with curious love, employs the rayed grace of the sun keeping time and the beams of the moon keeping pace with the chasing roots seeking to touch all that is buried in us. The self planted oracle. Allow me to demonstrate, *She picks up a shovel and slams it into the raw earth. She spends most of her life now digging down to the depths of herself. As she digs, sweat and tears mix with blood, and the sun leaves her weary. In the winter with it gone again. It takes all her strength of will, she will, she will, she still has to will to keep the blade slicing. In the frozen ground. She’s mad, or quite nearly so, until “DinG!” the shovel strikes some resonance. The jolt reverberates her soul and as she reaches down to touch the varnished lamp the whole world is made to glow. Bringing it to face, with an open mouth blow, she begins to shine it with her shirt sleeve.” The story goes on, but what do you think happens next? Her genius comes out. And it tells her that she was the one that put her in there to begin with, and the one who buried it. But she doesn’t remember, so she requests her first wish, * “I wish for all my memory to return!”* and the genie, never failing to grant a wish, hands her a pen. And says, *“Write.”*

In this story the woman is a writer, in another version she is a painter, an architect, a mother, a monk. The genie always hands her the appropriate tool. The following line, however, is always the same, she says “ Write, write, write me a riddle” or perhaps it was transposed incorrectly and is supposed to read, “Right, right, right...” Either way we now have a conundrum on our hands, considering the genie never fails to grant a wish, yet the memory?

It’s written in layers of spontaneity sparking with some passion to, "finally follow that skinny thing we love toward the great pulsing unknown.”(Martin Precthel, The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun, 78)

The composting heaps of salvageable memory-matter must be turned into the soil to reap the plant from which will grow the fruit to bloom the seed of another. And when we drink tea from the leaves and suck on the petals morning dew, we slowly- over sleep and time- over moon and sun- imbibe the spirit which has been sown to show itself another layer of growth in us. So this is how the poet works backwards. The rhyming rhythm written as a riddle holds its sap askew a stone. So the lessons grow. And the walking toward. Ripens Perfectly. The self suckling suckled self.