Dollars As Folded Art, Incense And Smoke

This is a poem that tells its own tale. It has nothing to do with anything, not that I know of. I saw pictures of dollars folded up cleverly and marveled. The various parts of the dollar, front and back can be utilized as part of the sculpture, and the paper is stiff enough to work with. Truly imaginative and complex shapes can result. Maybe you have seen this stuff. Mostly I marvel at the patience involved in working out the ways to fold the money. Who would take the time, I think.

If you have ever been responsible for a collection basket and have some dork out there who knows how to fold money in complex knots, you will like me see why this kind of moment suggests lobotomizing Mr. Dork as a solution. Unfolding the money is a pain in the ass and the art of it is not then very interesting at all.

Dollars As Folded Art

I took my dollars,
Folded them sidewise and more,
Found the eyes and ears.

Found the ways to make them stand
On their own, upright and strong.

I've got a problem
That bugs me, dollar master.
My wallet's empty.

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I went to college in philosophy and psychology. I don't usually get lost in complex thought. I have a poem, Bird Dog Like Cunning that speaks about my capacity to navigate according to maps that I keep in my head, that I make as I go. I could already do that at four years old. I make a living making a kind of map, graphical instructions for the performance of work. Here is another example from yet another world, the world of ideas and knowledge. This next poem is about that. It is also about knowing what that world is.

Incense And Smoke

A scatter of views
All find their way to corners
Where they start new homes.

The trouble with letting go
Of them is how they part ways
Even though they come
From the same complex of light,
From still deeper sound.

I find I clasp them
As if I owned them
But they are incense and smoke.