123.365 - whats I cannot

                    Suddenly all the continents slipped and fell.
                                        Harold Norse

see?  I do not know how to think like that
could no more say “Jack and Jill danced in the clouds”
than “the tanks moved through the battle without their treads”
have no idea how to mean “the politicians spoke their truths”
or “mushrooms grew from the sheer stone cliffs”
and “the bees collected honey in bottles”
oh, I can write fiction
some of my best characters are
but my mind is trapped in the world where planets
roll round the gravity well of the sun
and no butterfly wings waving on Earth
cause an assassination near Arcturus
a woman can make a man cross a room by not looking at him
but no wars start without a politician’s smirk
and Venezuela does not burn in Baltimore
a child may die in the Darfur
while politicians argue whether that killing is genocide
but their argument does not cause that death
I cannot claim “I dance through walls as a gift of your love”
although I know that feeling
logic and reason must have their way with me and what I say
and so I cannot tell you “poetry masks the assassin’s knife
and turns a war into a night of love that lasted weeks
and decades of historians could not explain”