24th in a Series of 26

Because this world has gone uncentered

The girl and I march forth at sunset

Across patchy white; I am tethered

To a wooden sled, in the basement

Long interred; the trees’ elbows are powdered

With the fine-grained snow that fell last night

In a frost cold, the like not encountered

Yet this year, though January is quite

Near its end; the month of turning 

Is losing its season, but still, out 

We go as the temperature slides, scouting

For a frozen track when the sun ending

Its short term leaves the cold to reign

And ice–at last–for a first and final run. 

Wait decades to walk the streets of your hometown

Again to see things that are not there-

A double exposure of time as you ghost down

A sidewalk by that old pal’s, where

You used to clown, duking it out in the garage,

Or those other familiars around the corner,

That somebody you mooned after, each block a collage

Of cut scenes and dialogue scooped from the floor

Of memory, knee-deep in former dreams,

(Oh you’ll date yourself even with your metaphors),

Under darkness’ arch pass those stadium beams,

Hear an amplified voice call out the score,

As years fall away, thinking you heard a name,

On that field of remembering, the same.

Choosing exile is choosing to be the message

In a bottle, floating in seas but not 

Of them, opaque vessel wrapping a vestige

Of some former life, curled up snapshots

And scenes spooled in memory, old habits-

You wake for a moment in then, not now,

Just fragments. You are your frame, those brackets 

Of instance, place and custom, how

The air smelled then, now; this sky’s tint-

That lucid air, this dense color hemming-

The way hips swing, here, there, forgotten fruit-

And faces known,  folded away, remembering

Features silted by years, should we meet someday

Again, that world in mind will be yet further away.

No, the pen is not mightier than the sword

Though it is true the words it spills do not rust

So easily as a blade in the grip of a tomb

Of fading marble, its lost hero’s husk

Mostly forgotten like boxed photos would

Be, or a field blooming with broken tanks 

Dyed by rain to the color of old blood-

Mere centuries will reduce this steel, ranked

At the moment the shells hit, to tussocks

In what will someday be an arid steppe long abandoned

By even farmers, who will have moved them like rocks

Off to one side to plow while they could,

Then departed themselves, as all will do,

As my words, written while passing through.

Putting on my former life like an old jacket:

It still fits but for this missing sleeve-

Well that and some of the collar is cut

Away or just disappeared somehow; it can’t relieve

Me of the wind quite so well now, though I

Could sit just so and almost look the same-

From the right distance and skew, the eye

Might see me as I was. Is time to blame,

When this same chair on this same veranda feels

Slant somehow like the view beyond 

As if the light from an unknown world steals

Here and all feels poised to break gravity’s bond?

Even the weather pretends as I order a drink

To wile as I wait for the sun, as expected, to sink.

devil was grown weary, so he hitched a ride 

with a carload of that righteous kind

the chosen people turning back the tide,

motoring ahead to a past of the mind

empty as blue sky. Knew he’d get the vote 

there, trimmed his beard and whitened his skin,

(that charcoaled hue would not do), seamless jesus coat 

too, said call me Luce, I’m here for the win

where we headed anyhow? I know

a place! Let me ride shotgun, you’re my type,

y’all are doing great, but do let me show

a few more  tricks, it’s about shaping the hype

whatever makes the sale, pass as gold your tin

‘cause fighting for the right, by god! It’s never a sin.

Wild seeds, we all drifted to the same field

Took root, we thought, in our rambling way

The long boom was on and there was no yield

Required, just a paradigm shift to pay

Digital pirates sailing raves til day

Cast a fogged breath on the post-ecstasy

Ghosts in a gallery on Minna, say,

Twined on a sofa or prima facie

Slurring a new deal as the sands ran down

In the many hands of the god of markets,

Speaking in all those abstracted nouns

Of data’s desires to line their pockets

With its freedom; all gone now. I fit in

Sharing low taste in dress, nothing to win.