EXERCISE TO INVOKE AN UNTESTED
FORM OF ACTUAL COGNITION
the movement between truth and no longer
the not exactly a grey spectacle what unfolds
a question of consciousness’ presence as
narrator affixed like appendage the new
as it breaks one more rigamarole
could this be it what others proclaim
an apocalypse with such familiar trappings
leave it to the beavers to build dams bask
in sunlight with their accomplishment
because where are we purveyors of failed
condos when from a concurrent sidebar
clarity presents and it is mommy dearest you
not quitting your day job guarding
a semblance of destiny writ black and inky
yet even as everything around you twirls
in the air balanced behind the scenes
you know the drill don’t you s staying alive
the clatter of dishes being cleared by
a busgirl the crystal with residue of tomato
and spent lemon wedge to scent air
itself already colored by sea salt
this is where consciousness chose to arrest
you lead you through a maze to a cell
proclaim all your needs met except
just possibly the one
SUMMONING A PRINCESS OR TWO
don’t ask was voiced but in the head calling
the meal Porridge quaint micro morph
to the macro meta walk a thing back
into childhood from grains
& oats the safe familiar enter Funge
it is not like UFOs or anything meaning
believing in them says we might dare go
ignite some other form of cognition Thomas
the Bahamian does not go in VIP or even
in Focused for that matter for the paradox of
a ban on iconoclast art segue to when
irony is dubbed a thing verboten witness
my relationship to mail sent from this
Blackberry insert woman fishing thru purse
insert beer so good it amazes the city as We
the city as We! going through the roof on
every metric here is what you need to know
except you don’t gold rush chaos flash
everything dead a true princess
awe this one lifetime knew
her
a voice demanding clarification but only
of sorts in all honesty the whole of history
is a paraphrase a repetition of only France
between untimely deaths an actress
and her role one of a lifetime consider
parallel wisps of clouds rise from statues
upended death given
meaning a thing outside oneself
incense in veins & tea leaves
the city as We! the city as We
who find cognition
transparent
the question of outliers scores to
settle rampant speculation as to a thing
beyond grasp
a missing metaphor
that makes you ache
A NARRATIVE WANTING TO PASS FOR A THING CALLED LIVING
inside a whirr of constant creation spinning black lace
what the daring system attempts outside
spreads
across the map no longer paper no longer dark ink
gauge from horrid aftermath of a pleasure cruise
the true meaning of pleasure
everywhere you look
nakedness is voluptuous alive using the wind
choose a context even a cover-up or a hoped for
conceit resurrect into a lifetime arrive at
the soon to be preordained
stripped of what
incessant everything lobbies hard to be
something mattering
a shade-less lightbulb to the stars gawking
curious anti-shadow to the spy the cold the bleak
back alleys the side deemed wrong
a narrative
wanting to pass for a thing called living departed
notion of a theme for the statuesque to bridge
perception of the wide gulf as any number of
distant scenarios appearing to dissipate rather
than crumbling doubts surface once more
morphed from a time years ago when father
turned out to be mortal
and then again
mother the same
the both
deducing the moral of any random parable
plays tricks might you be fully destined
to always barely just discern them
you may think you’re still about this thing
only break lapse to find newly
prescient one actual gulf omitted
Miguel Escobar’s poems have appeared on-line at Vext Magazine, Diaphanous Press Fall 2017,
Diaphanous Micro 2.5, Luciole Press, in the Wordpress blog community, as well as in smallish
literary/art circles on social media both since late 2015 as well as circa 2007-2008. He resides in the
northern California city of Sacramento, at the storied confluence of the American and Sacramento rivers.