METRO LACE

III

April 10 (continued)

Adrift, again,

and who remembers why?

Numbers were clarified for the moment,

an encyclopedia of wishes

ready for the asking.               And then

Time enough.  Go further in till the dogs bark

and the rebels cite chapter and verse.

Coming back brings with it

old burdens coated with breezes

or at least the occasional mistral.

Thumping was heard in the foyer

and then down in the cellar,

and all the while we stood at the bar

waiting for a signal in the heavens,

a day when sound would collect itself,

returning to earth like books

covered in cotton.

Let us not assume we know what this means.

Prefer surprise to last year's costumes,

or those names you gave the mastiff

that seemed to know you through the window

as you came and went, delivering milk.

We all know we're supposed to dial the number

and ask for Jean, but some of us recall

how endlessly sad her little voice is

and will never have the nerve.

***

Better bread, he said,

but then such news is stale,

and everyone went “mmmhmm”

in hopes such things find favor

with the cult leaders, making

charlatans tow the line.

We're always adjusting our angle to suit.

There's little chance of us needing the bigger model

but if the motor fits, so be it,

I'm not one to haggle over price.

I'd as soon shoot my dachshund into space,

or plant flowers at the bottom of the lake.

I'm coming back to her now

from far away, soon I'll be so close

I'll make her skin crawl,

and then she'll have to invite me inside

her house of windows on a beach

where I had the good fortune to find her

sleeping on a couch, dreaming of ladles.

Quixotic isn't it, I'll ask

and she'll sigh with such melancholy

all hope of distracting her will vanish.

It's then I'll impose the limitations

of old acquaintance, ask for

my stamps back, attack

the Aquafier with paint.

***

“Caligula” can't be right,

consists of too many letters,

and anyway a discarded ticket

has been left in the ashtray.

When next you see me I'll be cashiered

and your uncle will barely remember we spoke.

You'll have to take up the hem of that dress

you always wore, the blue and white one,

so thin it seemed made of veils

and you at the center of its bright agitation

as though sun rays reflecting

on sunken treasure.

I'll keep your place till you get back.

“Visigoths” is a perfectly valid word

and seems to signal a new chapter

in this trance you're seeking,

but let me be the first to remind you

that bird has flown,

never again will your patience be tried

by having to walk sightless in the woods.

All paths lead to Rome anyway,

and I was just coming to that

when you interrupted

with that nonsense about your shoes.

Take heed.

***

Dogs don't mind,

do they, if you always walk

the same way through the neighborhood?

The light plays with just the right freedom

in the end, and whatever you keep

in that box under the bed

remains when you're gone.

I'd like to cancel my subscription

but they always find me again,

those loud and clever braggarts

with their infernal rhyming games,

and just when I thought pizza

would be our undoing,

Alicia brings in nachos

and starts it up again,

those convivial evenings stuffing face

and saying things we'll later regret.

Everyone avoids that alley

where smokers collect in the dark

and pretend to be making speeches

about the perils of fracking

in Pennsylvania

while occult circumstances

hamper our efforts

to circumvent the side effects

like the sickness unto death

and the great lawsuit.

Someday we’ll thrive

as explorers in a landfill,

grateful for whatever we can use.

***

Everyone, evidently, will be glad you won,

erroneously or not.

That was the wind in the barley, I suppose,

that made us look again and wince

at the condition of the roof tiles.

Everything left out in the weather

comes to this eventually,

and those baubles you salvage give

to the tinkers making their rounds

with a hey-nonny-no and the like.

There are shotgun shells

for the asking, and pelts of animals

so dear in our museums still.

It's a great land, this, with its codicils

and liens, with its habeas corpus

and et in arcadia ego, its whirlwinds

and hurricanes, earthquakes and floods.

I'm still shouting fire in a theater aren't I,

and he stands ready to queen his pawn

while the shadows grow longer

and the peregrine falcon named Gomez

hunts with a clear conscience in the azure.

The families that moved to the mountains

had their reasons, secure in their trust

of all the bounty needed to flourish,

with no one to tell them what to build.

***

Forget, friends, the Alamo

for soon it will be too late to help,

and the rallying cry will die

on lips grown cold for want of love

or at least the ammunition wagons

tethered to the jail, and the armaments they carried.

No one take a shot till I get back

and yet how dreadful is the air

hereabouts.  The cold stones

of this rustic altar invite blood,

a sacrifice of the innocent or at least

a slaughter of edible critters.

We'll be told to swallow our pride,

oh yes, but at least we all knew

weisenheimers, brainiacs,

and shrinking violets, and never

let the muse of history muddy her skirts.

Tomorrow we’ll slay that Goliath

and go lightly into death, for this is the hour

of our anointing, look you,

and this our scaffold, and this our noose.

Remember to cast ashes on your pillow

and to soak your clothes in ink.

Sorted and compressed are your texts.

© Donald Brown 2010/2013