Way back in the day, before I was married to E, she and I nevertheless got into mischief. It was a wonderful time, really, and it feels good to say that we did these things in our youth. For example, we got our hands on some truly enlightening squares of paper and, after many hours, wound up in a grocery store. It's a formative moment. We had the sort of profound insight that accompanies experiences of this nature but, unlike many of these moments ("my apartment is floating through space!"), I think we were right. I've never been able to engage consumer culture without suspicion after that. I've been trying to write about it for years, but--for, I think, obvious reasons--the results were a bit. . . goofy. But I think I might have hit on something with this draft. Let me know what you think.
The Bright Frog, the Grains and Milk
Grain comes from a prairie with an artist
and a woman in a store deciding
the toy surprise. See the immense truck shoulders
and the highway and the fatigue of us all.
The frog did not speak
what the company wanted me to hear.
It did not jump, swim or dance.
I saw the box and the frog on the box.
We share this hallucination: clouds
of attention reveal the world,
clouds that race toward and away.
Real things form, lean on my arm.
Too much comes from the box.
Too many frogs, too many people
hurtling toward other people.
There is paper and there is dirt,
fields deeper than boxes. Get nose down
in roots. Smell the bones of your face
fading into ground before the fire.
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