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
