TV Contrast

a television swirls and whoops
in an otherwise calm room,
crazy contrast
to the sagacity of bookshelves,
the poise of a sculpture,
the zen-quiet of pottery.
 
the lambent fluorescence
is like a jacked-up crystal ball
that guzzled too much caffeine.
it spouts sugar, fashion and death,
it juggles stories, jingles and tricks
to conceal yet suggest
its needy egoism.
 
for hours, 
a geode has sat wisely on the coffee table,
deflecting flashes with triassic stillness.  
it doesn’t squirm like the eyes 
of the people on the couch.
it doesn’t let advertising
infect its essence with 
consumption.
 
it doesn’t bloat mentally
until vividness has no flavor, 
thought itself a waste of time--
but rather, like the trees, stones
and dead leaves outside,
like the forest, or an owl,
it respects silence.

Speck in the Rush

i pierced the noon-hour blitz
like a hound of water
passing through a long, fleshy grate.
i bounced off chitinous faces,
deflected off bureaucratic eyes,
scolded by a vendor’s proboscis
 
until i zigzagged wildly
through a pinball machine
with elbow bumpers,
my thoughts nothing more
than frills of mercury
dodging assaults of wool and hide.
 
mocked, jostled, spun and tripped, i realized
why the city had become alien to me,
the people like oxen with insect faces,
their cars cocoons that never give birth
to anything that flies.
 
i would always be too slippery
for them to beat, a speck 
in their permeable anxiety,
despised because of my scofflaw need
not to rush.