The Painted Word #64

He said the “corpus” of “the whole of human knowledge” and I stifled my laugh so hard I snorted.

As I dabbed the warm milk bleeding from my nostrils and admired his supercilious smirk of inevitability, I wondered if he really believed his euphemism and hyperbole or if he was just trying to get me to believe it enough to fork over another $20 a month in participation dues.

The poet said, “For me, poetry is the evidence of a life and not the life itself. It is the ashes of something that is burning well.”

The “corpus” of “the whole of human knowledge” is the evidence of intelligence, not intelligence itself. It is the ashes of a fire that has quite frankly not always burned well but produces ashes endlessly–ashes that may or may not be suitable for artificial consumption, at least where intelligence is concerned.

The poet also said, “And sometimes we confuse ourselves and try to create ashes instead of fire.”

As we shuffle through this Valley of Ashes, searching for that mansion on the shores of another sound where we can hold someone accountable for this smog of smoldering slop we now breathe, I don’t worry about whether the machines will find a way to transform the “corpus” of our ashes into the lenses that will harness the sun and fry us like Sid’s ants and motley dolls. As far as the machines go, que sera, sera–and here’s my twenty bucks.

I’m more interested in you.

I can see your ashes, but my question is: where’s your fire?