“Time may be an abstraction, but it makes the days go by.” – John Koethe.

Imagine, if you will, that I were not

an acolyte

among the living,

my days more than a catechism

of routine. From the nasturtiums

floating face-up

in their glass bowl

to the window that shattered

that summer I was broke. I go on

exhausting years

on the unknowable.

 

Consider how easy it is to look up

from your half-eaten

breakfast with its drying riverbed of yoke

and compromised toast

to stare out

at the interstate as if in prayer,

the waitress transfixed

as well, her

coffee-pot suspended

in mid-air… we interrupt this

American morning to bring you

a moment of desperate

reflection.

 

Everyday laying down

little pronouncements.

Examining the artifice

of my life like some multi-faceted gem;

not beautiful exactly, but curious. Foreign

 in the way delusion is strange

and familiar at the same time – an alien

notion setting up

a homestead in the mind.

Harbinger

of the great ego crash to come.

 

In spite of judgments

skidding across

my thoughts like hard rain,

It’s one articulation

 

after another. In spite of my heart

clattering its tin cup

along the bars of its cage.

 

Did I mention that which leaves

one empty? Devoid

of any fullness

that might have mattered

in its time?

Jarring insights, illumination

that washes over you

like cold water – and then…

a trip to the dump, the aching

overhead lights

of a drugstore, a void

where your mother’s voice used to be.

 

 

 

Photo By: Diego Iaconelli