Mike Pottebaum: The Website
Hot Water
I don’t mind the sand when I see the beach in all things
Sometimes I’m the frog in boiling water
Sometimes I’m the roof in a summer rain
Every sword has a second edge
Which side cuts depends on where you stand
The means are the ends
The medium, the message
Take a hot bath but don’t throw out the baby
Take a walk by the ocean and talk to god
Or whomever it is that roars
If I knew I wouldn’t tell you
That’s like catching shadows in a stream
Collapsing the infinite
Why ruin a good thing
The people of Polynesia traveled thousands of miles on the open ocean in canoes
The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage
When the time comes
Don't Ask
who
what
where
when
or even why
Ask
how
The world turnsThe wind blowsThe moon moves
All these forces push and pull the water in different ways
The waves crashing on your feet are just cogs in a universal machinery carrying energy from the stars
The churning churning churning of the cosmos
Collapsing clouds of dust and other things into stars and planets and moons that spin and spin and spin
And all that spinning
That celestial dance
That’s what makes the water roar
If that’s not god…
But names narrow
The French and Indian WarThe Seven Years WarThe Third Carnatic War
George Washington Costanza meets the French along the Ohio River and yadda yadda yadda the British are the masters of the Indian domain
Pieces of the patchwork plucked from the mud
Bloody footprints at the crime scene
Tell us a story
Collapse the infinite
There's a contract embedded in the rhythm of Manhattan streets
Handed down from generation to generation and refined in the doing of it like a river carving its path to the sea
The traffic lights are ornamentalNight lights for the visitors who can’t won’t dance
The system reveals itself once I’ve finally shed my destinations
I hop the numbered streets down the upper west side like a mad rabbit looking for god in the headlights
Don’t fuck it up
The ocean simmers in the sun, seasoned to taste with rock and lava
The hot and the coldThe brackish and the briny
These physical and chemical deficits and surpluses push and pull the water in different ways
An eel larva born in the Sargasso Sea rides the Gulf Stream to the rivers of England where he’ll grow and prepare for the eventual inevitable return to his place of birth to cum and die
Don’t fuck it up
The HMS Challenger was a warship before it learned the Secrets of the Sea
Two ships of Theseus passing in the night
Am I the water that passes through my body?
These waves that carry the echoes of the big bang, the dregs of primordial earth
Surely they carry more recent memories
Maybe that’s why they claw and tear at the Earth
Eating a beach overnight
But no they’ve always done that
You know, it’s the funniest thing…
I’m sure this was all going somewhere
I can’t remember now
Dr. Livingstone, I presume?
The physicists say the arrow of time is irrelevant
The equations work just the same without it
The universe plays a different game
Yet here we are barreling along from past to future
Weaving our threads through a dense fabric of events
If the doors of perception were cleansed
This brave new world would appear to man as it is
But people are strange
Sing us a song; you’re the tambourine man
Tell us a story; spin us a yarn
Collapse the infinite