Lawrence W. Thomas

 

DIALECTICAL ANDERSON

 

"We're all amateurs at reading our own minds, but that's all we have to work with"

                                        Allen Ginsberg

 

Anderson, sometimes at a loss,

catalogues everything, lists of possibilities:

the pros of having ham for lunch, the cons.

Storing everything away in crevasses,

maybe to have them surface years later,

the accumulation great

and not always useless; only what he can't recall

is obsolete.  Memory feeds on trauma

or ecstasy.  He remembers

the emotional, like when he kicked a dog,

what he was doing when Bush was selected,

or how he felt when he first saw the Nile .

In discourse, Anderson knows no more

than he can recall, dredging up rebuttal,

surprised when the obvious is denied.

 

 

 

WHERE ANDERSON COMES FROM

 

 

Anderson speculates

as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny

and finds little comfort, his subjectivity

clouding the issue.  He knows only

that there are no shortcuts growing up,

the glibness of utterance today unrelated

to his stone-age lack of coordination.

He tried tennis and golf, and failed.

A conscious cover, humour, overlies

his youthful naive with wit, wry and ironic.

Anderson knows that the sprints of days

are no preparation for the long run however

determined the pace, that activities today

must meet today's demands, not yesterday's.

 

 

ANDERSON VERSCHWUNDEN

 

 

It's nothing like the stock market crashing

nor his house burning down

and, although a few in his family died unexpectedly.

it's never such trauma.

It creeps in, predictable and no more ominous

than a chill in the morning or something on the horizon

as remote as a suicide bomber

or cutting food stamps and education.

Add to that his own dreck-heap of disappointments

and failure to keep up with demands.

Anderson feels invisible when the phone doesn't ring,

insecure when he worries if his weaknesses,

in the eyes of others, outweigh the good.

 

 

 

ANDERSON AND FALSE PREMISES

 

 

Bemused by so many questions

he already has answers for, Anderson

can only smile like when he reads of dinosaurs

chasing our ancestors.  Idle curiosity

makes his origins only of passing interest,

not enough to scour unreliable sources

that reveal the early surgery that produced a woman,

highly selective deities whose blessings

and punishments flow upon the deserving

and undeserving with disinterested parity.

He gets the message without taking as literal

Zeus' shenanigans, the promised virgins,

or crowded accommodations in a shaky boat.

The trappings of festivals and holy days

shine more luminescently than their feet of clay

which, to Anderson , lie crumbled in the mud.

Whenever possible, knowledge abolishes faith,

blind and too subjective, his beliefs dependent

on premises he can demonstrate with certainty.

 

 

WHERE ANDERSON COMES FROM

 

 

Anderson speculates

as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny

and finds little comfort, his subjectivity

clouding the issue.  He knows only

that there are no shortcuts growing up,

the glibness of utterance today unrelated

to his stone-age lack of coordination.

He tried tennis and golf, and failed.

A conscious cover, humor, overlies

his youthful naive with wit, wry and ironic.

Anderson knows that the sprints of days

are no preparation for the long run however

determined the pace, that activities today

must meet today's demands, not yesterday's.