Saturday, February 29, 2020

data points

it is a leap day & i heard on the TV news that leap days are pretty rare
you gotta be fucking kidding me, right

speaking of rare this is the first february in recorded meteoroligcal history
that there has been no appreciable rain in california at all

the older i become the more i know fuck all but i am constantly discovering
the new, for me, shit like the pianist keith jarrett

because no matter the age of the piece of art or the artist
if i just found out about it then it is all brand new

& i think of all that i have yet to discover
& fall in love with

like learning the size of the universe its age & the mysteries
of dark matter

or that every poem & essay i write are molecules
in the fabric of an indifferent cosmos

but also how fucked up we are in this post enlightenment age
because many of us believe superstitions

like astrology
& i think of that movie by the swedish director roy andersson

songs of the second floor [2000]
in which the stockbrokers took to the streets

in self-flagellation
to correct the markets that have gone askew

every day in the streets they beat themselves
when the markets went south

& i the ever faithful cosmonaut stumble poem by poem
every hour of every day

in pity wonder & horror that somehow thinking
yeah man maybe we might make it

thru this mess
& then i come to another hour & think maybe not

2 Comments:

At 2:13 PM, Blogger Tom Beckett said...

It makes me happy to hear that you've discovered Jarrett's music. I've been listening to him for more than 40 years and,I have to say, his is a music which exalts the spirit. It's not a music which can be listened to indifferently. That's really something.

 
At 9:47 PM, Blogger richard lopez said...

hi tom, i've known the name for a long time but hadn't listened to jarrett's music until last night. at my monthly meeting with fellow poets where we have dinner, drink beer & share poems for critique we were talking about music. one of the poems read was about listening to jarrett's koln recording. i went home looked him up on youtube & had the top of my head taken off & my ears rewired.

 

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