BUSH BOX/ D. Hickman

New World Epigrams

David Hickman

*

The great themes have been lost Daphne. The idea of becoming and the bright ontologies we have obscured by our crimes are diminished each day in the journals & the Times. It's rare to appreciate a simple thing -- A bell-blossom of morning glory on a trellis in the spring -- the daubs of light around the blossom's skin, where I remember for a moment past the prison of memory, something bright and clear. An unmade thing.

*

All proofs fail the spiritual. That’s their best trick.
The only hope for the spirit is in the experience of it.

*

There is a clarity that, when perceived, lights the one who knows it. It is like a kiss, and it is brighter than a kiss. It knows what it is, not by reflection, but experience --and is the constant perception of its own concept .

*

In our time it is ego that is the model for almost any system: the head of the hydra that grows a new head, whenever one is exposed, and, inevitably, decapitated.

*

The past lies empty. The earth is dying. The darkened contours of a dry intelligence moves in gradients and shifts, and pits the population against itself. In the new millennium we call this "management," and it works as well domestically as it does for export.

*

In the field the birds flit and glide. It is as if they float on the rays of the sun, following them into light's oblivion, the molten drops of fire that, burning, clarify them.

*

Sorrow is everywhere. No one needs to look to find it.

*

A human being is more symphony than cacophony. Yet one tuned
poorly leaves the music stranded. In part we have our institutions to thank for that. What a difference if acts of kindness yielded a five percent return!

*

In times of consequence, longing fails us. More is needed: the intention to be empty. To give up what is sought after and find what blooms.

*

When the Antichrist came he wore a mask of number, and, bleeding us en masse into a silver bowl, offered up our ignorance in place of hope.

*

The Gods are jealous of us. They look down from their fires at what gnaws Prometheus, and make certain that all of us can feel the grinding.

*

The bald eagle rises out of the Roman phalanx
to sip the oil of Sassanid

*

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the jets machine
another plinth of corpses for a man of destiny

*

The shame of my country is in the lacuna’s of its lies.

*

In the papers the pundits hawk
a glib unity,the language of liberty
an excuse for much death.

*

In the cities all silence has been erased.
Reverence is forgotten
in the rush for plastic and duct tape.

*

To think on divinity is impossible now,
as the fear has done in, not the divine,
but the approach to silence. . .

*

In Washington death
wanders the official corridors,
fingering the names not yet inscribed
on the marble.

*

Who lives in silence
lives at the threshold of truth.

Interrogative

Eurydice, did Dante speak with you? What circle do you inhabit, dead before Christ's birth? . . .And Rilke. . . were his poems a comfort to you? Or was his obsession with Orpheus just an excuse for fine words? . . .Death finds everyone, though you would understand that better than us. Having met too many who were tourists among your griefs, and watched as they turned you into imagery for their poems. Eurydice, I'm sorry. Though in your internment you must have learned more than most, having seen the vanity of so many who were ruined, as they knelt at the waters of the Styx and burned.

For More of David Hickman's Poetry and Digital Collage visit KULCHURWEB