copyright 2012 by Dale Jacobson
MEDITATION ON HUNGER
It’s a petty way to organize a universe:
this dependence on food, which has become
each other, Mr. Bean working for
Mr. Gardener, who works for Monsanto.
Whatever a name means matters less than appetite.
And so let the day proceed and call it good–
then cannibalism is the word that devours
all others, and something fiercer than stars
eats them, and turns on itself until
turning finds its center and light is black.
If all the hopeful planets are only specks
in the washing void rolling toward
the end of cosmic time, and the great myths
of the tiny Earth are only war or lust,
poor Troy and unfortunate Orion,
then let the corporations consume
their consumers, whose worthless dreams
molder through their worthless bones.
In a world that is only chemicals
talking to chemicals as ants touch antennae,
or kill each other, red against black,
and corporations are persons whose
language and love is money, then
a person is a shell and the best are shills
who know nothing matters except profit
beneath the shimmer of real or fool’s gold.
I’ve wondered as I walked clear mornings
when sun was warm on the green wheat
and no terrible winds of horizontal rain
raged, how odd to be occasioned from
the elements: mineral, blood and sinew
all made to disperse when the heart
wears down. And though we pass on
the engineering code for body or bridge,
mind or computer, and generations go on
inventing God and war, could I hope
hope is more than forgetting hunger?
Or wishes flung far into the well of stars
more than just memories even as
we wish on one that falls? I know
a clod of dirt is indifference, but what
except hunger opens the emptiness?
When caves were home and graffiti was art,
and may be again, was it only charred meat
that drew us to the campfire, together
lost in the dark and alone in time, or
entranced by flames leaping into air,
spirit dancing with spirit, those bright
spaces on the edge, and night at our backs,
the eye of imagination open within?
(copyright 2012)
MEDITATION ON HUNGER
It’s a petty way to organize a universe:
this dependence on food, which has become
each other, Mr. Bean working for
Mr. Gardener, who works for Monsanto.
Whatever a name means matters less than appetite.
And so let the day proceed and call it good–
then cannibalism is the word that devours
all others, and something fiercer than stars
eats them, and turns on itself until
turning finds its center and light is black.
If all the hopeful planets are only specks
in the washing void rolling toward
the end of cosmic time, and the great myths
of the tiny Earth are only war or lust,
poor Troy and unfortunate Orion,
then let the corporations consume
their consumers, whose worthless dreams
molder through their worthless bones.
In a world that is only chemicals
talking to chemicals as ants touch antennae,
or kill each other, red against black,
and corporations are persons whose
language and love is money, then
a person is a shell and the best are shills
who know nothing matters except profit
beneath the shimmer of real or fool’s gold.
I’ve wondered as I walked clear mornings
when sun was warm on the green wheat
and no terrible winds of horizontal rain
raged, how odd to be occasioned from
the elements: mineral, blood and sinew
all made to disperse when the heart
wears down. And though we pass on
the engineering code for body or bridge,
mind or computer, and generations go on
inventing God and war, could I hope
hope is more than forgetting hunger?
Or wishes flung far into the well of stars
more than just memories even as
we wish on one that falls? I know
a clod of dirt is indifference, but what
except hunger opens the emptiness?
When caves were home and graffiti was art,
and may be again, was it only charred meat
that drew us to the campfire, together
lost in the dark and alone in time, or
entranced by flames leaping into air,
spirit dancing with spirit, those bright
spaces on the edge, and night at our backs,
the eye of imagination open within?
(copyright 2012)
1 comment:
Hi Dale. You took me in one night back in 1973 (April I believe). You had me stay on ye old ratty couch and I found a job and apartment the next day. I felt like I'd kept some sort of track of you over the years but somewhere along the way probably needed to look you up. "Politics in Poetry" I still have in Dacotah Territory, No. 15 Winter/Spring 1977-1978. Also, five poems of yours in Dakotah Territory No. 5, Summer/Fall 1973. I believe along with Bob Waldridge that you had a Dakotah Territory chapbook but if I bought it I can't find it. I too was able to take Tom M.'s writing class. He generally stayed focused on the work on the page which impressed me because he was sharing his craft with us. I do not remember my classmates at all but I can remember he could be generous about an effort but most of all by just attending to what we had written he was an encourager. Hope our paths cross again. I was glad to see you had a life after being about the most serious young writer I'd ever met and deserved an audience too. Take care. Rick Hilber
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