MESOPOTAMIA

You can’t see it,

but it’s there.

The ground

that is continually

being worked over.

The hollow where

daily excavations, digs occur:

somebody’s serious and systematic

attempt to coax the remnants,

what remains to be seen,

to the surface.

To exhume, painstakingly, from the past,

the proof of prior relations.

To piece together a story

that makes the Grand Inquisitor, science,

right about all its speculations and suspicions.

Evidence is what’s sought after.

And if found…

then we can call this activity archeology.

Then I’ll answer to Mesopotamia.

DÉCOUPAGE

     after Henri Matisse

A house

A chapel

A painting

Intimate 

Overlays

Dwellings

All inside 

Each other

Existing

Within your one

Devotion:

A life

As vibrant 

And vital

As découpage

MISE-EN-SCÈNE

Rearrange the furniture.

It’s your room.

The mise-en-scène: play with it.

It’s your movie.

And the feng shui:

consult with the invisibles, 

why don’t ya,

it’s your fortune.

The where of where you put things

is not arbitrary nor accident. Placement

is almost a kind of sorcery, really.

It’s all in the treatment,

in other words,

that you either see or don’t.

And if you don’t, well then…

a lackadaisical approach

may just creep into your relations also

and have the people in your life

begin to feel

a bit like coffee tables

or ottomans,

if you’re not careful,

that you shuttle about 

because you’re bored

or in a bad mood,

or because your sense of decorum

is elsewhere,

probably out watching

a mid-day matinee—

that is, until it finds

another reliable genre

of distraction

to replace the magic

of the silver screen.