Incorruptible Actuality, a poem by Dan Smart

These measly fractions of
our lives—the crumbs
we horde shivering

and the theoretical
models of its atoms
which we first have

to sketch,
then believe in, then rage
to remember—

they’re just such a small
part of it.
It’s like we’re all

staring—long and hard
at the world’s
most precise

and sincere
and dazzlingly
beautiful mural,

one-eyed,
through a skinny
corroded length of pipe,

to witness one simple,
unsentimental
tile at a time.

The big picture—if we could see it
mounted there,
against the far wall

made of pure
white lightspeed—would be titled:
The Future is Only the Past Remembered

and the docent’s nice little plaque beside it
would probably read
something like:

The artist’s intention here—was never
to win the war.
It was always, only, and ever
to end it.

Dan Smart is a poet, writer, and musician based in Chicago. Recent publications include Spoon River Poetry Review, The Legendary, Cease Cows, Red Fez, Hooligan Magazine, and Structure And Surprise. His daily poetry project, Rhythm Is The Instrument, has been active since 2013 and presently contains over 1,700 works.