Fractals: Lost

Painting by Charles Criner


fractals: lost


fractals as if
to prove
Plato
too
only
told stories
a plate of dominoes
slapped down by an old
black man laughing hard in
Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1956
sipping at his medicine in his Coke
swatting at flies with his gray felt hat
the cane laid out in the fields
row after row as if
god were a tailor
cutting a suit
for the sky
green she
says is
the color
of genius
& the boy
sees the heat
like water dreams
flow into dimensions
like slots in a cereal box
where do the ghosts vanish to
as if the tip of the bud is no tip
but where the light decides to keep
the secret of what else hides in the mouth
of a god sporting a hound’s tooth vest
whispering any pattern at all
weave unweave count
by the negative
it is all about
trajectory or
how da
bones
fall
out;

the wheat the cane & the slave trade box tops

* * *

Notes on “the wheat the cane
& the slave trade box tops”: Moses, reeds,
canes (Cain), irrigation, desert mirages,
slaves, black & white, tablets, spots, bricks,
boxes, plates, mats, woven patterns, caskets,
cartouches, repetition, child
& old man free to see things as they
are & as they aren’t (raising Cain),
buds & thorns, Hell Hounds on My Trail,
the swamps of Mississippi/Egypt,
the green of growing things (o wise Eve),
of envying things mortal & immortal,
crocodiles & baskets, wheat & chaff,
things slip into & out of the night
(knowledge limits the limits of knowledge),
dominoes fall, o Eden o bones dem bones,
the tailor says it is a perfect fit,
one size fits all, heaven & earth, repetition,
as above so below,
st st st stuttering Moses singin’ da blues,
wake up, boy, slapped upside the head (caned),
life ain’t a game, how clever we are in the hold;
welcome to the land of

* * *


an orange
tossed
up

& falling

the blood red
ribbon she
wraps

round her waist

her shoes lying
at the door: the rain
palely blue or the kitchen

curtains the lacing ache
of all that distance;

the childhood of her rooms: constellations

* * *

how sea life dies
invisible to
rivers

who threatens ghosts
but unclasped hands
an avalanche crept

under her bed
how did we
get so old

moon skin
curtains
limp

the crème
curdles
stony

trains
careen
off tracks

a voice in
the radio warps
bleeding icy distance

a slave barefoot waters
the circle of dried marigolds
shoos away the musty coated goats

accepts the judgment of those who only know
the half of it or does recognition of the loss
always come too late to beg for anything
save a hard forgiveness

a clown sweeps up the straw covered dung
in the spotlight
the boy high in the bleachers
his face like a gingerbread pancake
& later she buys a bottle of something red
& sweet wishing for a fire;

the gods live in motels $180 a week


Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry