Ritual

It was, when allowing himself to think from this perspective, the most responsible thing to do. Vets in the old country were no stranger to it, nor were medieval charlatans posing as holy men of medicine. How something so old brings with it, into the present, a very natural aura of propriety, of old testament rightness rooted in ancient, simple sense.

A leech, perhaps, strategically placed

A cut along a tainted path of vein

Interception of the problem at the dangerous source, as if to remove a poisoned dermis from the face of a child. But no one time treatment for some. No. For some it is a chronic addition to purity. Daily, had he his way. Bleed himself of the rue of life deemed spoiled somehow in its passing from anticipation to forgetting. Itching behind eyes and scalp, he would self-impose treatment wherever, whenever. Get it out, pin it down to anything that would soak up the black desire.

Some volunteer for pain and sweat for the sake of a better physique.

Others prefer to keep a ripped soul, abs be damned.

Looking Ahead - excerpt

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/hobo_pd

TWO YEARS AND FIVE DAYS FROM NOW I will be in a small European town. It is a town not familiar to those who haven't travelled abroad, but by no means esoteric. German. I believe it is German. German or Italian. Yes, the cliched barber poles tacked with red-green ribbons are nowhere to be seen. It is very likely Milan. It could be Regensburg. It feels like autumn (which in either country could be mistaken for December in Kentucky). There's no one around, no signs so no language by which to steer, so for the moment I enjoy the lightness of the mystery. Larger cities. Their convergence is directly proportional to their population. Frankfurt, for example, is only 3.2 feet from being within the borders of Manhattan. Rome, I have been told, is already Philadelphia. Smaller towns. Somehow they manage to evade the torrent of progress. Some people simply can't afford even last year's fashions. They even smell old, uniquely themselves old. I take a deep breath and am satisfied with the aroma of foreign breath, circa 1967. The breeze. It almost isn't there. What is present is sharp and wet, confusing my pores, my eyes. The skin oils at the thought of it. The town, as it is, is a model railroad accessory. The train never stops here, but is used to give the environs as a whole a realistic flair. Vaulted homes boast ancient beams, woodwork exposed on the lower half. Just like in fairy tales my head mumbles before I have sense enough to edit it. "Yes, just like. Those stories make up the plot more than the setting." That'll keep it quiet for a while...

(to be continued someday)

South

By chance or
by God I know

why Borges says murmur
not whisper in his piece
on Babylon -

Colors

An opaque blue breeze
souths here each night,
while blood flickers on the tracks.

photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/zebble

Tree trunk split
legs in cool fall air,
a splayed testament subdued
but ubiquotous
an absolute vital nature
like woman

Id to Ego

Dear Michael,

It is important for the sake of what you love,
for the sake of doing right by that which keeps you moving forward,
to enter all
the
way
in
and give yourself over. I have seen you
lounge comfortably around the edges.

You really shouldn't be so cocky.
You're a poem, too, you know.

Sincerely,
Michael

Old No. 9

At two miles per hour it arrives for the three hundredth time, and this before noon. It's the old guard (Hooray!) orbiting plaster of paris capped with history to the last detail.

Nostalgia is borne on colloid plumes -

part faded wish, part heated oil - and always best

used in open air.

You can see it in their jaded eyes, their old dreams now to scale, but they keep looking for old No. 9 to take them over the hill.

I love it when it hits them,

see that its just another plastic revolution,

a false chance at the ideal,

at least one wheel

always spinning out of whack.

Finding the Frequency

In a rare moment this weekend I have found the frequency, the frequency of the invisible to and fro of the All. I found it and I matched it for a second. At that moment I was part of it in its dance.

As a series of cars passed me from behind parked on the boulevard, I contradicted
the fact that I was sitting still. No, I was going backwards along a thread made concrete
in the moment by the dragging of my jagged fingernail across my gumline.

Its speed matched exactly (and that is the secret, I am convinced) the speed
by which I was overtaken on the street.

The taste, an underground transmission I could not interpret
but strong enough to be received clearly by anyone in the state.

I celebrated.