We Are Not So Much Savages Poem by ryan blood

We Are Not So Much Savages



we are not so much savages
as we are men
not simple men, not farmers,
or men of the fields,
but thinkers.
our hands hover in the air
above the keys of a typewriter
as our ancestors' hands did over
the stone of their wheel
and we reinvent the wheel
with our words.
as a child i watched these men
with their smoking jackets
their suits of tweed,
they bit pipes between the
two walls of their sharp teeth
and tried chiseling the world
into something new that it was not
with their wheels, their words,
but they now are nothing more
than someone remembered, than a poem
and i replace them in their absence,
take from them the thoughts left unthought
rub life and begin again
the circulation of electric dreams
brought to sudden end by death.
i lean into a typewriter
in a room darkened by evening
and spread with the dim lights
of the firey ends of cuban
cigars
traveling to and from mouths
like captured lightning bugs
captured night skies.
we are not so much savages
in these offices, these libraries
we do not paint ourselves with blood
or love our wives so proudly;
we are men
not simple men, not farmers,
but planters:
we are planters of words
our hands in ink as they are in dirt
and from our hands
come words
come wheels
come flowers and fruits
the fruits of our labor
fallen to the ground
and nectar like rain!
then the oranges; peaches; sweet apples
plucked by the savages
we once were
as children
as men.

(august 2006)

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ryan blood

ryan blood

resident of tampa, fl
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