Charles Fort

Pay close attention to the patterns
And leave the spaces blank.
I will apply my own scientific method
To the wildness of things.
My intention is to play the game without cheating.
A snippet from a newspaper
Tells me more than Plato or Descartes.

All kinds of things fall from the sky:
Different-coloured rains, yellow, black or red.
Blood.Fish.Frogs.Hailstones the size of cannonballs.
Giant spiderwebs float down and cover the countryside.
Some folks will understand, others go insane.

That day when the boy next door
Told me, grinning, that Santa didn’t exist,
That he had seen his dad putting the presents under the tree.
I could not believe it-
All that splendour untrue!-
Surely he must be lying?
But I thought about it, and thought about it,
And the doubt slowly grew.

I collect and arrange things in order,
And re-order the order,
Adjust it a little,
Then start again.
What need is there of petty invention?
The facts themselves are all too beautiful, too much.
Fiction and truth are equal strangers to me.
It is the patterns, you see, that matter,
The shapes in the sand.

That ghost city on the horizon
That never grows any nearer,
That is where I am headed.
In a few weeks, when Mars is once more in opposition,
We may witness more peculiar events occurring.
Everything, I find, is hyphenated,
Oxymorons from top to bottom.

At the end of each day,
I jot down a plus or minus sign in my diary,
Depending on whether, in my opinion,
Life has been worth living.

I have invented a new board game,
A more accurate representation of war,
The troop movements, manoeuvres, ambuscades and feints.
Why, when I explain the rules,
Does no-one understand?

I speak, but do not believe,
Like a weeping statue of the Virgin Mary
Or an earthquake after a meteor.
Comedian or scientist? Which am I?
Beware the quiet men with watchful eyes;
Some of them have strange ideas.