TEKATAK

"Dinosaur Whitman," (c) 2015 emily eissenberg

TEKATAK
from Pearl and Other Poems

Restless, I entered the chat room with Jack

distended in speech & hyperlinks

& lonely from solo work of scouring

vast archive of internet banks &

Google Books & encyclopedia sewers

& hundred thousand fibers of

work-frayed hair & scholar hat

& bleak-slouched shoulders &

motionless butt of sitting, numb

& flittering thoughts of argument

moth & outbranching

vain bibliography brain

colorless emotional & restless

for love

& the formidable robust muscular

                  bonds of human text:

for Sunflower Allens &

rose-sick Blakes

asphodel Williams &

blossomdeep Annes

but in the chatrooms & forums

                  & journals & blogs

the text was too abstract

                  woven layers wan & flavorless

soil too thorny or shallow

                  or deep:

no proper soil for the work

to seed

the only ones who could read

                  were Jack & me

& me & Jack, & our reading was a lovely

                  tekatak plant.

I am a lovely tekatak

                  I have no history or culture

a flower of no particular nation

                  relaying my clean fragrance

no asphodel or poppy

no gingham print patch of sassafras

or Appalachian sawtooth grass

no shield-flat plains of Asian paddies

or rice-ripe rows of sun-red grain

no chickadaw tree of tan savannah

or arboreal star of trilac plant:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed

I wasn’t one.

When pearl-wet hair of willow draped

I wasn’t there.

My wet fronds wave in lavender ponds

                  in seas no eye has ever seen:

Indian Sea, Atlantic stretch,

Corinthian bays, Mariana Trench:

All earth’s oceans are too deep

                  its plains are far too shallow

even rarefied air of moons

is too blood-rich & thick

for tekatak’s tremulous branches

I spread across every continent, and across

                  every continent’s origin

and at every continent’s conclusion,

                  there I am, a tekatak blossom:

luxurious and single,

                  particular, disparate,

a disparate particular layering of

                  single luxurious fragrance

alike to each who smells me,

                  whoever smells me, respiring

the singular unique sameness

                  of each to each his single

                  breathing—this—this breath—

                  this breathing—

the breathed out perspired flavor

                  of his diet & habits &

                  climes

the scent of these things each

                  to each nimbly parting

                  the individual fibers

all truckling to sunk-down

                  shoots & roots &

eager to receive

the tekatak-lovely tekatak stalks

                  & tekatak feet &

                  tekatak flowers

Of all particular continents,

                  flavors, diets, climes,

& also the ozone husk of these,

                  invisible distillation

the produced offspring of everywhere

                  & nowhere, native alike

to canyon-sediment nomad pasts

                  & passed over oral traditions

to musk-bright neon modernities

                  & homogenous rows of Tai Pei

                  McDonald’s

to refugee camp futures of displaced

                  workers & pidgin-ambivalent

                  lingua francas

to furred ashtrays of dank

                  Alexandrias & machinegun tons

                  of child Crusades

to spaceship moons of forbidden books

                  & Caribbean classrooms of colonial

                  daffodils

to crowded streets of Bollywood screens

                  & traffic-thick lanes of Bangkok

                  anthems

to North African ports of island palms

                  & Jerusalem mosques of desert

                  dates

Among all this, remarkable fact:

I have never been seen, no

                  soil bears me

Everywhere-wide is too thin

                  Nowhere-thick, too deep:

except your marmoreal branches, Jack,

                  the tekatak plant wouldn’t BE

(c) 2014 lee sharks

from Pearl and Other Poems:
http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429895012&sr=8-1&keywords=lee+sharks+pearl