Poem Expo

Chaos

There are places for chaos on the page,
meaningful, apparent
confusion — temps en temps on the continent
does not mean “time to time” in Kent,
or Greenwich. From stone through weeds and parchment,
through bad times, words made their way to the printed page.
Bibles now not just for those who go to worship by carriage,
but for those who pray with bare feet,
some washed, some smelling of stables and excrement.

I’m not sure the words ocean and sea
mean the same to you and me.
Ninety-five percent universal confusion,
dark matter was born with the legitimacy
of an onion, the roar of a lion.
I sit in the rumble seat of judgment,
I damn myself for entertainment,
for wasting time on hopeless entertainment.
I am guilty of snarling lines, Gordian
knots in my “Shakespeare” fishing reels.
I must untangle this because eels
have hearts like us. The enemy
is symmetry.
In the spring of content,
I trust glorious chaos. I smell in disorder
the outhouse of order.

I must have respect for what I kill and eat,
Jesus gave them loaves and fishes, not meat.
He added, “Waste nothing you eat,”
he did not say, “Waste is chaos made by me,
or my Father, one person who is three.”
Rebecca, at the well,
said, “Drink. Water your camels.”
I swear, my hands each on a Bible,
the only evidence admissible is invisible.
At twenty, I was lost in the snow, a sleigh bell.

Chaos is not a “sometime thing,”
its face and back are turned to and from us,
what I cannot see is beautiful, or an isthmus
that connects almost nothing to almost nothing — 
the great unless, either/or.
I grab on to metaphor,
uncertainty, dark matter, gravity specific.
The motto I nail to my door:
The Devil generalizes, angels are specific.
Chaos makes me merry,
string or rose-by-any-other-rose theory,
romance of the rose,
roses that go with any other flower,
from devil’s paintbrush to huckleberry.
From fertile Chaos sprang Eros and Night:
Chaos danced first with Eros, then jealous Night.
Time carries a scythe, women and men sound the hour.
I model for myself, I pose in north light.

With helpers, his stevedore brothers, Hypnos
and Thanatos, Charon still poles his familiar ferry
across the Styx to an island where skeletons dance.
Einstein said, “I too believe in appearance,”
he didn’t think Old One plays dice, takes chances.
You bet your bottom dollar the universe
rhymes with another universe like verse.
Yeats, Herrick, and Herbert would like that.
To them, I lift my hat.
Delphic chaos is wise,
metaphoric thinking multiplies
bunches of grapes, by tripod, by butterflies.
Chaos is endless longing — 
God’s pussycat.
In Prague, Mozart knew a starling
who sang his piano concerto all along,
except for one note he always got wrong.

By Stanley Moss