Compare Oceans.

[mnaz]

If it rains in Seattle, it was understood, the slow, cleansing death. In Seattle, if six winter weeks pass without a shower, then talk of a "drought" begins. I puzzle over this scientific hallucination every couple years.... rumors of drought.

If it rains in the desert, it will cease tomorrow. If it rains tomorrow, it will cease next week. If it rains next week, then it will cease next month. If it rains next month, then it's personal. Understand that there is no drought over my head.... hasn't been for quite some time now. Whatever heading I take, storm clouds find me like a superfluous cult. I command them to multiply over the nearest reservoir, to end the foolish talk of drought, but this cult obsesses over me.

I notice a few changes when the clouds break. I don't know what to do with these butterflies, though I enjoy their tandem power dives. Flutter has surprising velocity. I never saw it coming, this blanket of green and yellow. A burnt slope of black volcanic rock and creosote bush has been transformed into a flush alpine meadow. Only the farthest hills, cloaked in haze, bear any resemblance to the hard desert I resolved to come back to.

But I still have an ocean which defies a point of reference. This one bends the baselines upward until all the roads are forced in that direction. It can take you halfway up a two-thousand-foot-high curve before you catch the ruse, the subtle slant applied to your three dimensions.

I once had a flat blue ocean; the one of which I am made. That one had a peculiar ability to stack miles upon miles over itself and remain swimmable to named or unnamed denizens with iron-clad pressure plates and contracts with uncharted fissures, cracks in a lake of fire. If I could get a camera down there, the feed might resemble my first desert dawn, or the first picture from the surface of Mars, shaded differently to account for science.

I compare the oceans. I will take my two-thousand-foot curve over a fifty-foot swell. But they both share a degree of wonder, or perhaps despair; the only known substances capable of filling that many lifetimes of empty space.

Glen Brown gave me a song, which thunders across this valley.
I have a picture of him; soccer ball on his left foot, a forced Manhattan pose, so far from the Jamaican ghetto which brought him to me. He wrote from the other side of religion, in self-defense, in a towering reverb; the side I never understood, the side I am living. I listen to his words.... "What will you tell Jah?".... words that could have no purpose but to measure their author's pain. The song attacks me. I always seem to end up here, on this slope.

[hester_prynne]

Hey Mnaz, been meaning to write to you about this lovely piece. I'm reminded of JF Cooper's "The Prairie". One of the best reading memories I have is how he saw the desert as an ocean. A mind-opening experience for sure.

I feel the richness of the place you are in Mnaz, and I thank you for sharing it, it's inspiring. The reference at the end eludes me specifically, but the feeling comes across anyway....something very alive here, you've spring in you and I appreciate the depth of your contemplations.

Just keeps gettin better and better Mnaz....!
I'm seeing a book materialize right before my eyes!
Thanks for a really good read.

H

[Zlatko Waterman]

I like the riveting of the reader's attention with the "I", slightly indignant, that burns through this.

This is the strongest crafting of point-of-view I have seen in any of your prose poems/disquisitions.

Very strong, mnaz.

Praise for all the oceans . . .



Zlatko

[judih]

very personal
striking
rich with reference in thick brushstrokes

[mnaz]

I'm taking every desert back road I can find, while I have the chance.... something about those sparse sweeps.... the "roundscape", as I call it....

Thanks for the comments. Much appreciated.

Hest.... I agree with you. The last part needs a bit more. It's just my obsession with '70s dub reggae.... Glen Brown wrote some heavyweight songs and rhythms.... and King Tubby's dub remixes seem to almost double their power....