Present Tense
Ever fleeting and thinking makes it so
for the mind’s machinery—to wit,
the brain—is matter that, alas—hold it
aloft to lament upon it—must die.
What thinks—cogito—ergo exists
in a delusion of time. In the Musee
de la Civilization I paused for a moment
before a lit box that purported
to display the brainy philosophe’s skull--
just the frontal plate and likely a lie.
Unable to decipher ancient graffiti
scrawled under caramel lacquer
there was nothing for it but to dawdle
in pensive awe at the thought
of what thoughts might’ve buzzed
under that bone. Mais je suis un homme
de mon age—if you get my drift--
a man on the move in the now.
“You walk from box to box looking
but not thinking”—thus second persons
tell us mercurial stories. This happens
and this happens until nothing
happens. All the history of thinking
was there and I had to hurry
right along if I wanted to look at it all.
for the mind’s machinery—to wit,
the brain—is matter that, alas—hold it
aloft to lament upon it—must die.
What thinks—cogito—ergo exists
in a delusion of time. In the Musee
de la Civilization I paused for a moment
before a lit box that purported
to display the brainy philosophe’s skull--
just the frontal plate and likely a lie.
Unable to decipher ancient graffiti
scrawled under caramel lacquer
there was nothing for it but to dawdle
in pensive awe at the thought
of what thoughts might’ve buzzed
under that bone. Mais je suis un homme
de mon age—if you get my drift--
a man on the move in the now.
“You walk from box to box looking
but not thinking”—thus second persons
tell us mercurial stories. This happens
and this happens until nothing
happens. All the history of thinking
was there and I had to hurry
right along if I wanted to look at it all.
