Proportion
Just want things
proportional.
Just things,
not all.
Not kings, kings
should be below:
shoveling, dripping,
and most of all—
literally speaking—
not people
nothing living
need be within our ratio.
I underexaggerate,
though:
there’s something
to population control,
something impossible
yet crucial,
so many ways
to be living,
particles, heavy metals,
even animals are living.
Kings live too amidst their industries
but who would know
and time
just want time
to stay
excessive
the moment cleaving
in threes
Copyright © 2016 Ben Doller. Used with permission of the author.
“Poems are contradictions in their fixity, composed, as they are, by so many moving, breathing, sounding things. I want the universe to be a fair place, to have an evenness to it, but it seems everything is moving away from everything else at its own private speed. Rationally, I want my life to be at least average in length, and to contain a reasonable measure of happiness and pleasure, but honestly, I crave much more than that. And then what if I’m at the short end, allowing the Bell Curve to rise at the middle and extend to the other end?”
—Ben Doller
Ben Doller
Ben Doller is the author of Fauxhawk (Wesleyan University Press, 2015). He is an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, and lives in North Park, San Diego.