Deer hunters drink the shittiest beer.
Discarded cans of Keystone Light bleached
By months of sunlight lay in the pine duff
Under a lone piñon tree The wind wound
Around the mesa and sighed a secret
Conviction about reality we all shared, I
Swore: we think we disagree virulently, but
Who swears to a vision or an alien infection
And who swears back that there's no such
Thing, agree, all unknowing, on one thing.
No, make that two things, two assumptions.
One, that there is such a thing as real and
Such a thing as unreal or less real at least,
No matter how furiously we spit at each
Other over which is which. And, two, that
There is an architecture to this dispute,
And the architecture, all unconscious half
The time, is this: the real is adjacent to, but
Always bigger and outside of, beyond
The less real, the game, the unreal. Even
To say that someone else's reality,
Someone's cosmology, choice of God,
Conviction of a parasitic alien infection,
Prey, ideal beer, is "just" a story is to say that
It's a game, a part of the lesser, smaller
Unreal world within the real. The hunter
Knows that the way to kill a deer is one
Thing and the way to celebrate is another,
And that the first is inarguably real, while
The second is a matter of morals, culture.
And that was the secret. We had evolved,
Like the first oxygen-dependent microbes,
Like the species who tolerated toxins
That protected them, clownfish, monarch
Caterpillars, et cetera, a tolerance, a buffer
For the rocket fuel of imagination, of story,
Of storytelling culture: we had a built-in
Reality distinction that came with our brains
And told us that some things were more real
Than others. This protected us, somewhat,
As organisms, from the effects of knowing,
But culture had its own tournament to win
And squirmed, true Morgellons, within us,
Just below the surface of our skin, writhing
To escape. So, I decided, under the junipers
Surrounding that deer-hunters' piñon,
Overlooking the locally insignificant red rock
Cliffs, listening to the wind sigh about this,
Pathetically anthropomorphically, as if
I might be convinced to take pity on it,
That I would take pity only on humanity
Convinced there was such a thing as more
Or less real, as lesser and greater reality,
A delusion that was different from truth.
And, being human and doomed to know
I was human and doomed, to the end, I,
The lesser fiction, lesser reality that was me,
Felt lonely. Ovid under a palm, Shakespeare
On an islet. Poets were supposed to know
Each other on sight, spontaneously, but
The greatest loneliness for a poet was not
Exile from humanity generally but to never
Befriend another, never arrive at a rival
Worthy of admiration, comparison, love,
Competition and quarrel. Did not have to be
Great, just well-matched. Better, in fact,
Well-matched than great because great was
A game the not-so-great played, badminton
With feathered skulls for shuttlecocks. So,
I was lonely. No one ever under this piñon
Like me, not of my kind, not like me. But then
I was not a poet, me, nor a hunter. I was Ishi,
The first of the unreal claims about me.
No comments:
Post a Comment