The Daydreamer's Atlas

And a primer on avoiding responsibility

(here, we move like music from foreign countries--
waltzing as baritones, meandering casually
through languages that we do not speak,
listening to a black-and-white earshot
become something less abstract
as its outlines are rectified
and its negative spaces are filled with color
by what might be lyrics embedded in radio waves,
or emigrants from faraway lands and disinterested parties.
these diplomats embrace our bastardized sing-alongs,
doubtlessly seeing them for the mash of heartfelt gibberish
that we know them in our throats to be...
imperfect, and hopefully less callous than chorus.)

of course,
we liked to think we'd have done as much for them,
if our guttural hymns ever traced over the same routes
in the opposite direction.
but then we found ourselves fused to one another,
and to the systematically crumbling architecture
that identifies everything west of the waking life meridian
in moments like what we imagined this one to be.
we knew that the way back was whichever we chose,
but it was the postponement of decisions
that led us there in the beginning.

we always said it would be better
to be a whisper in the slipstream,
than a scream on the stopwatch,
but we knew that we couldn't stay forever,
and that kids can't raise themselves.

(and yet...

Reviews

[Joiedevivre]

the words you use and the way you put them together... One has to think again, you can't just read a poem of yours quickly. The stuff genius is made of!

[Joiedevivre]

My God! I am so impressed, sorry for gushing all over your poems but they are true works of art. It may sound exaggerated but its true my heart is beating stronger reading these. You write superbly!

[Nobody.]

all the things we've learned not to learn...blech!

Well done again.

[Robin]

and let us spin the globe and see where the finger lands ...

and those songs , too bad so many don't bother to understand the tune ...

[Chris Smith Welshpoetcs]

Mr Blake, you write in a way that gives the reader food for thought. Excellent my friend.

[Kerry O'Connor]

meandering casually
through languages that we do not speak,
listening to a black-and-white earshot...
What an interesting combo of words and sounds... and the poem has barely begun.

Wow..the hubris of Western culture, the inability to change for the better, the entrapment of spoiled children...