Afflatus

So they say its flatland

after all, a holographic cosmos.

Such a surprise? Consider

how much time we spend

skating across surfaces.

This one, for instance.

From paper-thin marks we make

round Falstaff, mazy castles,

the twisted Western Front.

It didnt really take G T C A

to tell us the whole shebangs

coded. We moderns traipse

the duckboards of shot life

reconstructing trenches.

Percentage of waking hours

glued to screens: up, up, up.

And if we count windshields,

were all Californians.

Give us two dimensions

to work our magic and

well plump for voluminous

reaches light-years deep.

Ours the knack for inflation,

divine puffery, perhaps,

impetuous point parading around

like some rainbowed bubble.

Hard to take being scripted,

projected ourselves, unless

we kill at box office,

never go out of print.
By the Sea, by the Sea, by the Caspian Sea

Next to nothing, that whats you know

about it.
Just another item
in the long list of your appalling ignorance.

Somewhere east of the Mediterranean,

maybe shaped like a pomegranate,

or a scimitar.

You could google it, but prefer to dredge

your silted memory.

Rather than facts, though,

mainly questions surface.

Freshwater? Or are seas salty

by definition?

Is it fished? Can you cross it?

Ferries, say, with space for
Russian-made cars.

Because youre fairly sure

Russians holiday there,
and eat the days catch.

They know more than you

about the ancient province of Caspis
and its interesting folkways.

Like the sucking of dybbuks into

hollow eggshells that are then cast

into the sea, or some such.

Okay, youre just guessing,

a case of vacuum abhorrence.

Looks as if youll simply have

to brazen it out.

So:
Muscovites stroll the painted boardwalks
enjoying borscht sorbets,
having ditched their leather jackets
for breathable cotton whites.
Ahoy, they cry, and fit for a tsar.
The lightly saline waters refresh
their limbs and lungs.
They dicker with Caspian merchants
over headscarves, and over seaweed
tonics, and over bureaucrat repellants,
and over bottled sands so Rothkolike.
Too much, they cry, and wrap it up.
They are happy for once, and their children
are happy in sailor suits, clutching
toy schooners theyll navigate in
Caspian tidal pools.
What a day, they all cry, for once
not plagued by their arrant ignorance
of Lake Michigan.