Francis Raven

Indicators



Take a picture of the signal.
You're not going through the subscription cards yet,
Are you?
We can't allocate resources to candycanes after Christmas.
The candles have burnt to the ground and the rest
Are just rotting after their own gifts.
Although everything else you own is organic
You might as well not open the packages,
The raw packages, the vegetables and the local organic meat,
I know you love them,
But you cannot afford them.
We cannot afford them.
The Country cannot afford them.
Your shirts are too expensive.
You'll have to throw them away.
Listen, take a picture of the signal.
The triangles, they don't match the rest of the apartment.
They're too small: gridlock.
And we flow here; we flow and we live cheap; we live cheap
And so we have time; we have time so we can love each other.
Listen, take a look at the indicators. Take a digital photograph of the statistics.
I'll show you how the tree rots,
How the candle falls to the ground, how things melt, all sorts of things.
I'll show you that citrus season doesn't last.
I'll show you that hawks cannot fly.
Don't pour the salt on the pithy section.
It is meaningless
Unless you eat the grapefruit in the morning
With the stupid special spoon.

1/7/05

A Small Dispatch from the Zoo



Peering over, spotting,
Trying to show someone else
Something else.
Moving through a list of known objects
Until the bird is cornered
In the grid of their mind.

"They always look like they're praying."

Wagging tail of a zebra
As it faces a red door.

"The other one got hungry,
see if they're going to fight."

Caiman teeth jut from a mouth
Already imprinted with aggression.
An eye blinks fully open
From within leathery spikes.
Motionless terror
Betrays the ease of power,
And yet, every frightening face hides
At least one embarrassing detail.

"Look, he's trying to eat that."

Male macaques postulate,
Like so many others,
That they rule the world
And have a handle on fate,
Even control other's destinies.
Their tails extend far from their asses,
But spare bits of language
Must make them question
Even their sagest theories.

"I bet the lion's lying down there, doing nothing."

All animals are silent,
Folded in a way ,
Leaving men to hypothesize voices,
Demeanors, full personalities.
Most interesting are the partially explicated,
Primates, for instance,
Place the taste of questioning language
On one's tongue.

"Sci-fi model, obviously."

The undecidable philosophical:
Do zoos make people care more about
These animals, and thus about the environment?
Or do they merely foster exotic attitudes
Towards fauna, which allow us to treat them
Terribly and finally to eat meat?

"What's that button on its butt?"

Behind the optical illusion of piano wire:
Beeeaters calmly smash the poison out of bees
So their throats won't swell, but morality never enters the picture.
Kookaburras laugh their way into the ethics of exoticism
By way of a B-movie concerning swinging on vines and a few grass skirts.

"We haven't seen any animals in 20 minutes."

The educational sign informs me that Wonga Pigeons
Can fly but prefer to walk, a fact that sheds light on pigeons in general,
Especially the flock on St. Mark's Square in Venice.

"His tongue goes all the way into that nest."

The philosophy of sign placement continually reinserts itself:
What if the informational placard appears to point to a different bird?
What if there are too many signs confusing visitors to the point
That they give up trying to learn the names?
What if the information on the signs is aimed at people with doctorates?
What if it is geared towards kindergarteners?
What if the signs merely list the names of donors,
Which threaten to crowd out the names of the birds themselves?

Another New Reading Strategy



A crushed New York Times
out of its zip code
and under a sleeping man's backpack.

I haven't taken up reading enough. There are floors I fall through. Sometimes, barriers I cross, (conceit).

Two mentalities meeting, mimicking each other, to teach in one case, to make fun in the other.

I need an epic tale for my next book of trite poems. Something I fall for. Others I fall into: Others quotes I could pass along. Spaced particularly.

Possible Common Worlds



Are there sentences
we want to show,
but can't
using our current system?

Spirals of the spoon
surround the menu
as it homogenizes
cream and coffee;
As the hair fiddles its way
around everyman's utensil.

Sight primarily works alone-
to be represented as a function
and to represent the next
as a valid future
(impulse into amplifier).

You've seen the trees
in the Solo package of cups;
You've seen them
in between layers of voice.

The product of action
repeating another transformation
but the simple postulates of this modulation
did not stick together;
possible worlds profusely generated
that did not need every common notion,
that did not even need us.

Francis Raven says: "I am editorial assistant at the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Broken Boulder Press published two recent chapbooks: "Notestalk" and "Notationing." Poems of mine have been published in Mudlark, Conundrum, Untitled, Pindeldyboz, Big Bridge, Le Petite Zine, Poethia, and Can We Have Our Ball Back? Essays and articles of mine have been published in Jacket, Clamor, In These Times, The Fulcrum Annual, Rain Taxi, Sauce, and Pavement Saw. "