The Skin of Meaning. Keith Flynn

band and lower

      their fierce, unyielding beaks.

      This is the path to creation,

      the dark dive, the arrow

      of the mind that screams

      for oblivion, even as the

      handle in your hands turns

      into a crossbow that cannot

      find its tricky target among

      the endless surprises of sand

      and water and hungry stalks

      of untrammeled grass. First

      thing to go are the eyes and

      then the distance shimmies

      and one imagines whole towns

      sawed apart by the tornado’s

      tip, as the finger of God

      touched down and the white

      ball becomes an iris, a star,

      a twinkle in the drain that

      might guide this sparkle

      of luck, this forty foot

      birdie putt, this clown mouth

      hoping to regain its

      clumsy, clueless tooth,

      laughing its black one-liners

      as the dimpled orb lips

      round its warm pocket

      and winnows happily out.

CONTEXT

      With great risk comes greater risk

      and to live in the inquiry is to abandon

      the safe proximity of childish expectation.

      Be careful, my father says, at every parting,

      as if he remembered the lesson of Cicero,

      though he does not, whose head was separated

      from its body politic and raised on a pike,

      after a lady, not a lover, stuck a pin

      through his tongue with a sign that foretold

      the editorial. Enough of his eloquence, the

      message read, and one would have to possess

      the brain of a chickpea not to get its point.

      Context is a faith that cuts both ways,

      a perfectly fitted gown, and the greatest gift,

      even among the gods, is the suave, authentic

      remnant of silent knowing, the arched eyebrow,

      the well-placed wink, bereft of seductive

      diffidence, beaten clean of detached ambivalence,

      robust with plenty in reserve, dense with sly

      experience, and remarkably, all in—

NOSTALGIA AS ENTROPY

       If, before the Bang, there was nothing, and if all energy since then

       is expended in the manner best suited to return the world to that state,

       then all seemingly random permutations of energy dispersal must be

      attempts to accelerate the return to chaos. —David Mamet

      The entire universe, the size of a marble,

      exploded and is still expanding,

      water moving from high energy to low,

      seeks the bottom, and every being follows it.

      Lincoln believed that all nations must shed

      their energy, and that wealth accrued from

      slavery would be dispersed through war,

      downstream from the dreams of the Constitution.

      True human nature is dissipation, the release

      of stored light into chaos. The good old bad

      old days are always in the past, blockading Cuba,

      or bombing Nagasaki, humans joined at the neck

      with machines. The rule book of diffusion directs

      us to make treaties with the Native Americans,

      because to live like Falstaff requires tremendous

      amounts of fuel. Entropy never sneezes, does not

      like magic or crocodiles or penicillin, hiccups only

      if the planets stop orbiting around their Sun.

      We want our designs to articulate a meaning

      beyond function. We want to own an experience

      we have not felt, just as Foucault wanted to turn

      his life into a work of art. We embrace the guilt,

      and arrange our chips in a manner that will affect

      the outcome of the football game. We accept

      the superstition’s fetish and believe by eating

      the organic apple, and stacking the plastic bottles,

      we will hold back the erosion of the glaciers.

      We tell ourselves we’re doing our part and keep

      our fair practice good coffee karma intact.

      The Starbucks logo features a double-tailed

      mermaid that is swimming in neither direction.

      The enlightened consumer is in pursuit of happiness,

      hedonism disguised as spiritual freedom, paradise

      purchased one cup of coffee at a time, like a bird

      repeatedly attacking its reflection on the window.

      Not the thing itself, but the representation.

      Coca-Cola was a tonic, but Coke is iconic,

      a brand inseparable from our cultural experience,

      like a print taken from a finger, lingering less.

      Let’s forget, for a second, the syrupy effervescence,

      or the grand imitations, Pepsi, Pepper, Pibb.

      Just as we do not practice the pronouncement

      of our neighbor’s names; we know them by their Prius.

      Our language is alive and cannot designate reality,

      but becomes a beacon, or signal, of our relation,

      ghost isotopes that build a memory from the alphabet

      and provide a trail for the sale, like the mystery

      of Coke, the more you drink, the more you want.

      Some stars catching our worried gaze have

      already ceased to exist, so far away only their light

      is left, disappearing in the cold static space.

      Those quiet mornings alone, or in fading twilight,

      when the mind wanders backward on its tracks,

      cirrus clouds thinning on the scarred horizon,

      dolphins plowing together in the near surf,

      or