I.3.iv Economic reality
“I don’t need therapy—I need
money.”
—student
saying
You
can’t earn enough in most
lifetimes
to pay for the poetry
required
to explain economics
to
reality. If words could be worn
out
and used up, crinkled in small
soiled
balls or left emptied
and
sticky in hornet infested
containers,
economic reality
would
be its tractatus, its ode
on an
Grecian liar
ringing
through hulls of democratic
bluster
from mouths in swollen
red
faces determined to pull
bootstraps
of every errant pilgrim
into
gravy free enterprise
of
incarnate logos saturated
dispensation’s
spiriutalized
saving
accounts. Who remembers
economics
is to home as divine
life
is to distant archaeology
of
theological midden heap
may
be prepared for sudden
showing
forth of hidden door
into
transgalactic transfer of cold
words
into apparition of deeper
encounter.
Say, a parking
lot
within the one you just left
your
car in, a vast sealed tomb
vibe
emanating into corners
and
crevices while it gains
a
reputation for ease of shopping
pleasure,
free parking, and
authorized
admission. Then economic
reality
realizes the rent
is
too low and moves increase of what
ever
margin darkness brings to talk
of
blue. Household debt, too
a
mystery of subtle encounters
with
manifestations of density
deficit,
misses the train and winds up
trapped
in some allegory of profligate
burghers
astride equine
rectitude
in the charge up
Consumption
Hill. Gravy
as an
elemental leads to formations
of
fat cutting brigades and periodic
weigh
ins designed to distract
attention
from vacuous visions’
hallucinatory
underground utopia
toward
what people want and back.
What
people want is an abyss
yawning
with boredom and often
confused
with questions of life
on
other planets. Is it there? and how
many
eyes does it have? Economic
reality
is its human disguise
amid
levers of power and stands
for
distribution of terror and pain
beyond
the usual kind, along with
accumulations
and hordes, beyond
as
they say, imagining, where all gravy
goes
once it has been cut, or cut
loose,
a true economic reality
awash
in glory and righteous
affirmation
of divine law,
or
maybe just a general rule
or
possibly an operating
principle,
how fat always
flows,
as part of the Grand
Design,
up, which is where after all
it belongs, in immaculate
dough-re-mi
ascensions.
Michael Boughn, on the occasion of being shortlisted for Canada's Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2011, was described in the Globe and Mail as “an obscure veteran poet with a history of being overlooked by the mainstream." He is the author of H.D.: A Bibliography 1905 - 1990 (University of Virginia, 1993) and co-editor (with Victor Coleman) of Robert Duncan's The H.D. Book (University of California, 2011), as well as being editor of Narthex and other stories by H.D. (BookThug, 2011). His recent book of poetry, Cosmographia - A Post-Lucretian Faux Micro-Epic (Book Thug, 2010), was shortlisted for the aforementioned Prestigious Prize at the same time his mystery novel, Business As Usual, was published by NeWest (Edmonton). Great Canadian Poems for the Aged Vol.1 Illus. Ed. is forthcoming from BookThug in 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment