To The Objects Of Our Desires And Any Necessary Objections Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Everything is talking to us - if we stop to listen.

Look out then for the notes in signs
The sounds in the unsound and the sound
The melodic in the iconic
Even the symbolic in unclashed cymbals.

Take a crank shaft - it is indicative
Or an egg tray as an ideogram
Or a plant become a pictogram
Or a Rubik Cube that is transformed.

Look out then for the clear notes, the strong sounds
The signs, the symbols, the icons, the ideas - the emotions
Picking up the rhemes, themes and memes that are fundamental
To our own wellbeing and the safety of society
Picking up the rhythm - letting things strike a chord.

No doubt it is easier if you are versed in Chinese writing
Where chunks of text are sorted and arrayed and clicked into place
And more difficult for us in that our sentences are strings
That run on loosely - largely lacking in form -
Depending more on punctuation and instrumentation.

But we can still listen deeply to the sounds of objects -
To the objects of our desires and any necessary objections -
To the essence of things - transformations and translations.