The Forest for the Trees

 

” It’s easier to imagine the end of the world

 than it is the end of capitalism.”

                                 ~Slavoj Zizek (Philosopher)

 

Poetry as we know it is dead.

Self-expression has been hijacked

by a glut of attention seekers

whose waking hours are spent

selling their souls for a crack

at self-importance, something

that can only arrive

alone and in the dark.

 

On the internet, everything is worn

on the sleeve for effect.

I am on film therefore I am.

To live on camera has become

a way of life for so many

of the world’s misunderstood youth.

It’s as if the only means

to be loved were to imprint

oneself upon another;

litmus strips convincing

each other of our

unique bacterial worth.

 

Appearing on a screen

is the body's new poetry.

In other words, to cause a stir

one must stir the collective LCD pot.

This condition of modern life

betrays a demystification that

alienates us from the natural world.

Modern life, disenchanted by science

and mediated by technology,

has made our former relationship

with the macrocosm impossible,

even if we are professed botanists

or hikers, we become posers...

as cameras won’t let life be itself.

 

Without the ability to see nature  

as the dwelling place of unseen forces,

teeming with images to be summoned

and transformed, as opposed to

an undifferentiated mass of resources

to be either exploited or preserved,  

it is unlikely that we will fancy

the work of Homer or Virgil,

and even less likely that we will

create such images ourselves.

 

I have become unable

to wax poetically

on a forest as I find

descriptions of trees tedious.

Descriptions of nature do not

take us to themselves, but

rather suffer by comparison.

We have the means now

to take us directly to trees.

it’s called photography.

But then, a poem

breaks the cinematic rules.

 

A tree. A birch.

Pale skin, dark eyes.

Peeling limbs

thrusting hands

in every pocket,

gnarled roots hiding

below in darkness

strangling anything

in their path.

They live

a double existence.

White in the light,

while in the dark

nary a need

for eyes or skin.

Brutish bull dozers

carving existence out

with their fists.

Their nature, subversive.

Their means, survival,

living in two worlds

simultaneously.

Above and below.

Feeding on dirt

and moisture

and yet worshiping

the sky whiles

they keep

their feet firmly

on the ground.

Will we live only

on their meridian

unless we

learn to burrow?

 

Is poetry still possible?

Can we still write verse

if not about the perceived

transcendent order in the universe,

then about the feelings

of unease within ourselves?

Will we draw our images

from the detritus

of consumer civilization;

an empty plastic bottle,

an iPhone with a cracked screen.

For me, I want

the forest for the trees.

 

For poetry to reappear, the muses

must return from wherever

they fled when we banished them.

The conditions for their return

I suspect, would be the end of

the internet and many other things

that most of us value far more

than poetry.

But then, what if 

we’re left

mourning the absence of

something we can

no longer name?

 

 

1/3/23