58. apple-abled

the apple of my eye | doesn’t fall far from the tree | of life

or so they say | sayings meant to tell us something we already know

I bite into the apple | and all I taste is words

when I attempt to speak | seeds slip out the side of my mouth

trying to find | purchase enough to grow | but I don’t have

the space for a tree in the side | of my mouth

or enough words to | speak of apples all night

Adam in | his sin of follow | grew

an apple in | his throat | to show the contours of his fall

the American myth | of many | is the Johnny

spewing apple seed | across the breast of the continent

a parable ending in the moral | to increase and increase again

forthing and multiplying | rampant regeneration

of human purpose | or at least their hope to have such

drive and focus | and so we generate | extending

the bounty of the earth | or increasing data

in the form of poems | charts of the movement of

your heart | words spoken to heal | those spoken to

maim | we grow what is bountiful | and we grow

what will choke the life out of | us

 

so it is | so it goes | interminable turning of the soil

back into | the loamy soil | as we attempt

to grow | the strongest most bountiful tree

to bless us | and to bear fruit forth | into the cup

of our hands | food as pelf | food as power

as this ancient Earth | burns | itself back down

to dust | and to the predecessor of dust | the black

nothingness | that surrounds everything that exists

just before the | blank nothingness that surrounds

that nothingness will | degrade into the impermanence

of lifelessness | the bald eyeballs | the apples of

our own bodies | will blink one last time and

never again | and sight of the great everything

which is the great nothing | will disappear

and nothing and no-one will wait | for its resurrection

no-one and nothing will change | and the dark eternity

will rest | thoughtless | in the process of its slow change

and we will | evaporate into particles smaller than

atoms | and no one will say or think | what Kubla Khan

did decree | or ask what his honey-dew hath fed

and so it is | and so it be | or so it will be | not

and nothing will happen | and no-one will need to know

and all we will do | is the nothing that nothing must do

the universes will condense | and explode and

recreate | giant balls of fire will affix themselves within

the overwhelming darkness | balls of rock will

circle these fiery stars | and their surfaces will degrade

transform | into fields of dust | they will create and

collect moisture | and form small pockets of liquids

these will grow into puddles | ponds | streams

rivers and lake | oceans and seas | gases will accumulate

without dissipating | amebae will appear and replicate

divide and flourish | eventually animals will appear

they will swim through the sky | walk through water

fly through the soil | divide and diversity | be and

create | plants and animals and life of all kinds

will surge | slowly | then with increasing speed | and

a few worlds | just a few | will reveal the power

of living things on a living | earth | and some human

will live on one earth | and discover the appleseed