More Lying Loving Facts, You Sort ’Em Out

For a long time the Spanish from Spain   

Who came here became slightly insane   

In a special way and just a little.   

You can try this yourself.   

Walk farther than you can into the forest in New York   

So it’s a toss-up whether or not you know the way back.   

For you there’s going to be a smidge of confusion, a glow of fear   

That smells like burning rye toast,   

And the illusion that you are the only person alive   

On the earth. You will probably have the second illusion   

That no one likes you, which doesn’t jibe with the first illusion   

Of no other people. This was about the extent of it, for the Spanish,   

They felt all that just a few hours a week, but every week at home,   

Living in, say, small San Francisco,   

Which made thinking slow and hard at these times,   

But if you try this yourself in the deep woods   

You’ll see you can still think enough   

And you’ll remember your way back to the loving arms   

Of your wife, husband, or mother, in Rochester. (Yes,   

You could try it as a child, but please don’t.)   

The Spanish had a purpose to walk east inland to the Sierras, the gold.   

The Indians said there were five hills and two mountains   

Entirely of gold and you had to wear ferns dangling before your eyes   

Like sunglasses when you got near the mountains.   

The hills, they said, were not so bright.   

The Spanish thought this was bullshit   

But were having trouble with the coast (where   

They truly believed the gold was) which was that boats   

Could not travel north and south even as fast as people walking   

Because the Pacific coast was opposing currents (you made   

Half a mile an hour in the water with biggest sail).   

An expedition of thirty Spaniards from Spain (living   

In small San Francisco) walked east inland toward what’s now Mariposa.   

It means butterfly. In that place, the shivering feathery

Insects rose from the ground and blacked out the sun.   

The sky had no room for more butterflies so the leftovers attached to the trees,   

Making the trees appear like ragged trees.   

Look up the other way, the explorers said to each other, but   

That way, when they did, was no blue sky but darkness of orange insects   

That did not fly in clouds but were the sky,   

So any forward motion by the thirty men seemed, not seemed   

Did make the sky covered each inch   

With the thin trembling insects, brown or green or orange,   

But as a whole a black ceiling with little light between them and the men,   

Who thought slow and hard but did think, and so returned   

To small San Francisco where no one believed them but understood   

The illusion because when they asked the thirty men   

What such an encounter with butterflies felt like, the men described   

Feeling the way all the colonists and explorers and priests and women   

Felt a few hours each week at home—   

Fear making the olfactory illusion of burning rye toast hand   

In hand with the illusion of being the only one   

And the simultaneous but contradictory illusion   

That no one likes you. How could everybody hate you   

If there was no everybody? Or even anybody.   

Well there was a way to fix this   

And we use it now around here (I   

Mean in New York and California and Nevada and Hawaii,   

Not just in my house) which is to wrap our loving arms   

Around each other. It works very well   

And I know you’ve tried it.   

The Spanish from Spain brought virtuous women   

Over for that purpose only (you don’t think the virtuous babes looked   

For gold, did you?) and it worked very well   

Except the women were worse, I mean much worse,

Not just specially a little insane and needed   

The loving arms much more than the men.   

They needed longer sessions and more sessions.   

What’s more, if the expedition of thirty butterfly   

Illusionists had gone six miles further,   

They would have seen silver sticking out of the ground   

Like glass after a four-car accident on a street in Rochester.   

But for many decades the promise of the waiting loving arms,   

Versus the unacceptable illusion of the butterflies   

Forming the entire black sky, kept them near the coasts.   

When you put down this book, you could decide   

For yourself if it is true that wrapping loving arms around   

Somebody is as temporarily powerful as I’ve made it   

Out to be or is possibly permanently powerful or is an illusion   

Like the massed feathery insects which were absolute.