i.

Write thin, read fat,
eat rice not sand.
Rice words, masticate
each grain to the drumbeat
of epochs, to the roll of rice drums.

ii.

A poetics gene: a metaphor
for the end of the world,
to write on this planet,
of this planet, metaphors
for its heroric deeds gene.

In the begin, the begin,
this planet you are on,
what are you going to leave,
what are you going to take
to the other planet,
words of sand ?

Eat rice, says the Saki bowl.
Give alms to blindness.

iii.

Rice paper,
papyrus on a brain stem
in a ventilation shaft.

Rivers of red
ink.
We scratch.

iv.

Cacti, bottle green:
phosphorent to the translucent night
written in the desert wind on rice paper.


v.

The fears of the trembling vertebrate,
the long field shrew
fleeing the hill to frozen waste.

Rice burning the paper sky,
small bones in the stubble
frail nib at the edge.

vi.

Forlorn the streets,
we drift, we drift,
on waste, on waste,
no fiesta for the poet,
no poem for the feast.
Walk down, walk down
the western lane,

the sky pins down bleeding,
born of pain, born of pain.
Take heed, take heed
the locusts come,
take heed the rice fields
are a burning
on west, on west.

vii.

No need to sweep,
no need to brush,
when nothing´s done,
nothing happens:
fields of rice & mice.

viii.

Wake to a dawn of low vision,
low instinct, to hands that grope bonds
to bind a frail periphery on the threshold
of mirage, chaos & the resonance of a day
that will finally become an echo, moon on water,
rice & flamingos in small rains amidst dunes.

Copyright Robin Ouzman Hislop. 2003. All rights reserved.




Blue Corn