LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHICKENS

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHICKENS

(En los tiempos peligrosos, para ti Gabo)*



The yard is dusty, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The chickens have scratched a path from one side to the other...---From “Charmed Life” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 07-09-12


As dusty as the mind of this viejo, hermana poeta?
The dust is there, siempre, so the learned chickens
could limn the ordinariness of their lives on soil
that has been fertilized by the manure of humans
who write in garbled language adorned by commas
and semi-colons as if their thoughts mattered here.
Some call it verbal diarrhea, I call it constipation.
A condition where the mind is no longer there.


—Albert B. Casuga
 07-09-12


*The brother of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Laureate in Literature, has revealed to media that the author has of late been ill with dementia, a mental illness which manifests itself as “a loss of intellectual power.”

This was published in Via Negativa as a response to Norfolk poet Luisa A. Igloria who originally wrote a poem “Charmed Life” in response to a prompt posted by Pennsylvania poet Dave Bonta’s  The Morning Porch.

AN IDEOGRAPHIC VERSION OF
“LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHICKENS”

(Lo siento mucho, Gabo.)


As dusty as the mind of this viejo, hermana poeta?-
The dust is there, siempre, ----------------------------
so the learned chickens---------------------------------
could limn the ordinariness ---------------------------
of their lives on soil-------------------------------------
that has been fertilized ---------------------------------
by the manure of humans------------------------------
who write in garbled language ------------------------
adorned by commas and semi-colons----------------
as if their thoughts mattered here.--------------------
Some call it verbal diarrhea, ---------------------------
I call it constipation,-------------------------------------
a condition where ---------------------------------------
the mind is -----------------------------------------------
no longer -------------------------------------------------
there.*-----------------------------------------------------


*If intellectual strength is represented by a square (a full and alert mind), this plays on an deographic/ concrete presentation of Gabriel Marquez’s brain being eaten up by loss of intellectual power. Que lastima!


---Albert B. Casuga
07-10-12