Explore "Topsy-Turvy" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ I. If I insist that violets / Are intellectual eyes / Dotting with a wave of sight / The chained recalcitrance of earth, / Philosophers and scientists -- / Blind boys who bolt themselves within a room -- / Will seek to torture me / For the flashing witchcraft / That rides on thunderclaps / Called imagination. / The crystallized escape / Of fear is known as logic, / And men have used it to light / Small spaces in the wilderness of black. / But I prefer to mount / Huge horses of the wind, / Whose fantastic laughter / Separates to metaphors / And similes that hurl their decorations / Against the wide malevolence of space.
/ When I return to the morbid / Helplessness of earth / And shake off the dream of freedom, / Men ply their knives of gods / And creeds upon my skin. / Much traveling through space / Has made me immune to pain, / And metaphors and similes / Aid my counting of blood-drops, / Bringing color to mathematics.