Saturday, April 26, 2025

On the oracles - Karen Chamisso

 

The oracle is bored, finally, of the future

Ablution in the cold water of the spring

Autopsy of the victim, the signature

In the disposition of the organs, fate’s writing.

 

The wisecracks from all the golden codgers on the wall

The epsilon, the laurel wand,

moving down the hall

to the chamber where you get your meds and electroshock.

 

So little and so much makes a poet

to whom the gods have decided to souffle their lies.  

Just as the city’s sack is found where nobody knows it

In the spilled guts of the sacrificed ram.

 

Oh Popeye when you play upon your guitar

Do you play the things that will be or that are?

She sees ambiguity shaped by ambiguity

and that wisdom is hidden in a children’s joke

 

or in some stray, scrawled obscenity

in a jakes, or toted in a poke.

To pose riddles and not ever guess her own

Has turned her voice into a frog’s voice,

                                                                                her heart into a stone.

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