Life in the Garden
1. Before the Fall. The pixellated silent film, and the animals are
Spinning in small circles in the dust. It was the Serpent who invented
Writing - the
Alphabet
As it marked the earth sliding through the verdant soil.
When this toothless serpent started counting.
And thus invented Numbers, the rest is History:
Paradise, Year Zero:
Apple, Fall
2. Men and women are now
Stuck in buffoonery;
It is an axiom that from a long way off
People look like a Flea
Circus.
Forced to play Harlequin and Columbine
In an infinite Commedia dell'Arte.
Cain wears Abel
Like an infinitesimal drop of acid
On his palm. All of Ancient History begins this
Way, but we don't have to drink
The hemlock.
3. We have only to let the pasted on
Stars guide us by Night,
And all the tiny Human Beings spinning in circles
To use as our Compass.
Landscape Architecture
for Harry Partch
The Pleasures of Merely Circulating
The clouds fly around with the clouds and
The Nightlily raises its head amongst the ultramarine
Sky the better to see the stars
Thumbtacked to it.
With so much tender Caution, just
Intonation
Wards off Circular Reasoning:
Pythagoras's Music of the Spheres creates
A Venn diagram of clouds intersecting while I,
I sit on this bench like a bookend
In this perfumed air.
Lori Ellison was an artist living in New York City. Sadly, she passed in 2015.