"Get the Picture" #11

EAR

(pour les Imagistes)

Words chalked up to

experiences show thru

as if they could be simply clear not

hefting thoughts we feel by ear

in the tongue all along

the cultural fake out

of visualizability.

"Get the Picture" #10

GROW

         (for Brigid)

Dirt’s mind’s words

we grow in it that

the plant shapes:

leaf, stalk,

shoot, ear, silk, tassel,

corn—and clouds come

to talk back

what the sky says

all along.


 

"Get the Picture" #9

CALLED

         (for Medea Benjamin)

To peel away the blur of a kill

called a bugsplat on the screen

and see beneath it the dead & maimed,

to recognize the fleeing squirters

as having lives and the right to a hearing,

to kettle the truths of these situations

and bring their boiling to a point:

these are strategies and stratagems

borne to us by euphemism’s art

in the force of metaphors

many of my students learn before

they come to class on the GI Bill

and there unlearn the lying in this

name game.