Suddenly,
She danced across
The living room floor
Her fat legs transformed
Into feather-light wisps
Of summer air
Arms akimbo
A coquettish smile aglow.
You could have seen the gypsy girl
In her, that ancient thread
Of life she clung
So dearly to
In the face of all
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
Trying desperately
To send her to hell.
We may embark,
The long unknown before us,
Laden with our tools of discernment,
Our wish for precision
Set athwart us like
A burdened yoke,
But the path, though unseen,
Is well worn, after all.
Like souls at the sorting gate,
Searching for keys
To waken the ghosts imprisoned within,
They call out to be deciphered.
Can you make it out?
Two names, no longer legible,
Then, “Forever.”
I
En garde, Messieurs!
My rapier is sharper than two half-wits.
I can trim your dualities two ways to Sunday,
Twice a day, et tu, brutality.
Why waste time on brilliant repartee?
A double-headed axe can twicely slice
And cleave like lipstick vine.
Entendre, Messieurs!
Your duelist tendencies bewilder no one.
Give it up. The day is lost.
Don’t think twice.
II
I had a friend who threw words
Like knives.
Thok! Thok! Thok!
And there you were, strapped to the board,
Hoping he wouldn’t lose his nerve
Among the adjectives.
Did no one tell you
Those knives were already there?
It’s only a parlor trick, after all!
One sudden morning, as the sun sprang gayly
Slung across the day
And the breeze teased the slithery waters
And crowned the trees with whispers
I slipped the irons of time.
The child grandfathered the world
Through my heart, and I saw the true meaning
Of love beyond mentioning, of life unsheathed.
I saw the fringe of being, the birthplace
Of torment and gain, hand in hand in hand.
Awash in that speck of reality
That illusion casts in the eye,
Was unbending everness, all in gale and garnet,
In anguish above and below
That which eludes the grasp.
A wisp of this and that,
And great epics are written
In groaning slabs of rock, in ecstatic wandering
Through surges of joy and despair
All identically kitted out.
Whether we arrive here or there
Means nothing, after all;
That was the secret that escapes always.
In the beginning was the word
And the word was not.
exiles child 