On Music and Time (Pt I)
time fails to be either
linear or circular—
it does not flow or move
but allows us to do so:
just as music compels
our bodies to dance
yet does not travel across
space as we do
time fails to be either
linear or circular—
it does not flow or move
but allows us to do so:
just as music compels
our bodies to dance
yet does not travel across
space as we do
The middle of June
And yet I smell fall
The leaves aren’t falling
But I find them floating in the creek
There’s voices all around
Their strangers but I don’t feel alone
Announcing plans to a sleeping enemy
is no kind of strategy; instead, like the desert,
I must change raiment in the chill of night.
Awake at last, he will find a strange landscape
his old compass shattered, useless, his eyes
will feast on plateaus rounded, mesas pointed,
under a cloudless, foreign sky, no mercy, parched,
he will fall to suck from bottomless pools in arid
canyons from arroyos with no source, imagine
himself on a postcard, no return address.
Retreat …
I ran away
An hour’s drive
To the one-room
Cabin of a friend.
Away from the city,
But I can’t run away
From myself.
Bad habits stay with me
Like the stench of dead fish.
Tomorrow …
I will be someone else.
Someone
Immersed in story
Ignoring the call of technology.
Connecting only with
My own imagination.
My words will
Carry me away
From reality.
Transported …
In time
And place
To a world
Alive only to me.
I will read
And revise
And read
And embellish
Words I don’t remember writing.
All in hope that
Someday
Somewhere, Sometime
Another person
Will join my world.
I will always feel most at home
with my geographical kin,
those who share with me
the knowledge of the same backroads.
Decades may separate us.
Hundred or thousands of miles
may create chasms
between where we were
and where we are.
In a split second
we boomerang home,
the sound of our twang
taking us down the backroads.
the sun has a look that would curdle my ilk
and a cape of motor oil,
of greasy finger prints.
the recipe says to pour off the excess;
cook by the book, yet i
won’t.
do you think
if the world becomes bright as eggshells
it wouldn’t
still be too dim to see?
hie noon, an interview
with a moon fat butter pat on a pancake too cold to melt
and ask,
are you glad yet you’re someone else?
or are you angry you’re yet someone?
hours will fill up your nostrils,
calcify your cavities.
time
and time again.
nothing ever falls asleep;
it just rises again on the gasoline celeste.
Lay your hands upon
the soft, cool, ferny moss
ground around
touch leaves
feel the veiny ridged existence
take your shoes off
let feet feel soft soil, grass
ground around
wade out into lake water
swim into the naked deep
Hop onto this
magnificent soaring blue with belly white
tree swallow
swoop around
Don’t look down.
Cell phone people
Let cell phone go
You don’t need its trips blips, its wide-area roaming
You don’t need to tip tap and call
Let them know-where you’ve been
Where you’re going-what you were doing
When you’re busy- somewhere else
Cell phone people
Let cell phone go
Over there, across town, around the block
Next door, in the same room
Always connected, always on call
Walking down the street, sitting with a friend
Who’s that you’re with? Not them or me
Talk over dinner, not to you, to someone else
Somewhere else, anywhere else, but here, right now
Cell phone people
Let cell phone go
Among my mother’s things
I found a neatly folded linen tea towel,
a vestige of finery
with mappings of needlework
Tiny stitches dove in and out
of the tight linen criss-crossings
of warp and weft
with the accuracy
of Olympic swimmers
butterfly, breaststroke,
dolphin kicking their way
around the edges and into
the emblematic central image
An entire miniature world of stitchery
created with a small metal
spear and binding sets of threads
capturing virgin territory under the
command of someone, Anonymous,
with deft hands, unwavering focus
and visionary prowess
all the time knowing
once completed,
surrender to the household was required
for it to become a mere
kitchen accessory
I gaze and wonder if this towel
ever buffed-dry any fine china?
was wrapped around a hot pot of tea?
Or wiped up any spills in a kitchen?
or did it remain untouchable,
wrapped in the very tissue
as it was found
sleeping in its own perfection
a voice never spoken
