writing in the dust

Brett Foster, “Artes Liberales”

“The miserable servitude
of the spirit”
is not exactly how one wants to hear it:
that’s just plain rude.

Yet Augustine, I suppose,
knew a thing or two
of everything one must do
to grow out of requisite imbroglios,

to grow out of your own
heart, or at best,
to enter the contest
imparting a different throne

or emancipated alter-
ego. Let go the facts
wearing their cataracts
or pirate’s patch of faults,

swelling shortcomings. Instead,
raise the mind’s eye
to vaulted ceilings high
overhead, as Hippo’s bishop said,

and forgo all carnal acts
of reading (though honest ones
would say that sure sounds fun).
Pay the mental luxury tax.

And by so doing, cultivate
a heart vivified.
Only the bland or snide
or blinded conflate

or substitute the sign
for thing, and therefore keep
failing to bite through or drink deep.
It’s a thin line,

and yet a vast chasm as well,
to shift from our blunt
meth-head spasms to wisdom’s font
and dwell

within a cedared house there.
Ambiguity, causing pain,
spurs the bludgeoned reader big with chains
and requires no little care.

[here]