If we end
The poets of the future
Never a chance
The philosophers
Neither a chance to delineate
The problems of the future
The questions of the past
The answers set in motion
By the build up of dogma
Which renders freely
The emotions of the vague
The new wave slaughtered
Never allowed to flourish
Extinct alas the dinosaurs
Of our time shall be found
By some evolutionary quirk
Perhaps by life from another planet
Seeing what was once ours
The azure sky and waves of the sea
Our great clouds and tall trees
And live here free to explore
And find us in our work
If any at all survives the asteroidean
Difference which along with earthquakes
Volcanic fires and tidal waves
Kills us

But perhaps if we resume our search
In death we can lead them here some
Adaptive life form pleasanter than we
Warring humans
Hopefully actualized in ways we'll
Never have the chance to evolve to

I was reading Apollinaire's Caligrammes
His poem "Tristesse d'une Étoile"
Or "Sorrow of a Star" where he lies wounded
In the head from a bullet his mortality
Just around the corner possibly from the wound
And a fever he wonders I feel
Quietly if he will see that future
Implicit in the reference to Minerva
And in the poem "La Victoire"
Of the poets or time to come-
And this is the great thing-

 The coup de grace-
Where the poet can see the future through
The eyes of his readers and the reflections
Of himself show the readers the past
But for this we fortunately have the words
Apollinaire uses them well
We have a lasting poetic record of what
It was like to be in the Great War
At such a strong presentiment
The future stood overwhelmed
Who can see the future now?
Is there something worse ahead than
A natural life?

My ex-lover and I worked our way in to the future
We told of events-she two-headed-
And I learning fast the feeling of ennui and anxiety for the present
Just noetic love letters helping each other out
Heading toward a better life for each of us
We were just seeing the future as it unfolded
Yes maybe we went through each other as mediums
But then if this isn't allowed we will
Never be able to time travel
And will be reduced to mere superstition once again-
Another dark ages I suppose is what they want
Where every thing is reduced to superstition

With no allowable proofs but I digress
Though I feel they're cowards for not wanting to quest

Apollinaire survived the first
World War only to get back to Paris
Produce his opera "Les Mamelles de Tiresias"
and die of influenza
The Surrealists came and Yeats wrote
A Vision
The Western and the Eastern blended in Knowledge
We came of age in a world
Forever falling apart only we put it back together
Building each room of this arcane Valhalla
To subject ourselves to stresses unknown
To our antecedents And we forget
The every reason that we live and reason with
Like Zarathustra after he left his disciples
And his enemies distorted his teachings
And Apollinaire fought similar enemies
He found them in the brothers he fought
Yet I am a madman aware true but often
Prone to hallucinate about anxieties and happinesses-
A Mythologist who falls in love with poetesses
Who I consider brave for taking a way out

That is strongly discouraged by psychiatrists and therapists
Who knows perhaps I will meet them in Dante's Homer's Elysium

Or reborn into another life or dimension or galaxy
To death and life we are still beholden
And the future braves us towards what could be our doom

Life will go on
 

Life will go on
 

Authors Note: (c) N. Scott Reynolds 8/13/98  Nashville"(In Memoriam Guillaume Apollinaire d. Nov. 9, 1918 in recognition to the 80th Anniversary of his passing)"

Who is N. Scott Reynolds?
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