2009 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 21
Posted by Robert

We're now 3 weeks into November. Only 1 week and a couple days left. Wow!

For today's prompt, I want you to write an invention poem. The poem can actually be about an invention or an inventor, or you can make the invention the title of your poem and go from there. Every poem is an invention of its own, and I can't wait to see what everyone invents today.

The Invention of the Eye


I.

It was dark for so long
one year in the sea that was everything, everywhere
that maybe was like the sky
(no - there was not yet a sky) or like the space outside
of whatever was outside if there was an outside

a year in the sea
times a million, times a million, times and times

It wasn't even dark
There was no darkness to see
no sea to see though we were there
Blind, soft-bodied
dividing to reproduce
the blind, soft-bodied
not even invisible
nor visible
as there was no such thing as either

and it happened
it had never been before
an eye grew
it opened
and an eye - the first - saw
first to blink
first to see the sea
first to make the world visible

one supposes color,
water, the dumb, blind soft-bodied
creatures swallowed and swallowed
and so we died over and over
becoming part of a creature
a creature with an eye

or
we learned to hide
to look like exactly sand or look exactly like rock
now that sand and rock looked like they did
we learned to agress
see me, see this
i see you too
i am electric
i am blue, now that there is blue
and the tips of my undulating sides are brilliant orange
and spike with poisonous yellow
now that there is orange
now that there is brilliance
and yellow
there must be poison
and seduction
both

i move through the water with filagreed parts
with whirring motors
translucent spines and dicing scales
shells hardening

i will breathe
I will go to the edge and find at the edge
another space to move through - differently
new world
i will move two eyes across its form
find form, find more

i will change before your very eyes.
i'll grow fingers and, someday, touch your face
that i see
and see is so beautiful


II.

and now then what if insight
gains sight
the blind, soft-bodied fears
the gentle, self-dividing loves
the strange formless ways of intuition

we might grow a sense to sense it
the medium we have always been swimming in.
you know what i mean.
we just passed each other in our minds, in it.
Soon we will know where we have been
all this time
all this long, long time of trying.