Here and there,
in the gutters,
I find an empty
spice packet
or maybe a
broken smirnoff ice
bottle, and
here and there
in the houses
on the streets
I find men and women
half awake and smelling
of rum at
six in the morning
on a Thursday.
I've got
too many of these
burn holes
these match-strokes
these scars
and too many totaled
cars.
Too many times
I've spoken my mind
with Seagram's
breath, too many
times have
we slid down the
ladder for a
false alarm.
All too often
I cast my line
a hundred times
and never feel
the pull
I so desperately seek and
all too often
is my mind's
eye broken open
for the purpose of
revelation.
I pluck
and pull
and push
and parry
every
sword-stroke
and slingstone
and
cower behind
a cowhide
shield
Knowing, as
one knows the sun will rise
again tomorrow,
that
we are all promised
the Hidden Jewel
in our ascetic's cloaks,
and nothing more.
Many times
I have sat in the woods
with a jaw full of
levi garrett and
a gun in my hand,
watching my own breath
steam into the winter's crisp
and listening silence.
Although,
many times I have been entombed in
metaphorical and literal
cages.
Day and night
I remember
and day and night
I try to forget.
The clang and bell
of the type writer
the clicks and beeps
of a laptop
the scritch and scratch
of pen on paper
fill the night and
I work to
tell some
twisted
tale
some odious
Odyssey
some
Epicurean
Epic
some
stolid
story about
a man who
remembered
to forget.
