Yet another girl-on-a-bike gif...

RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS [2013]

Ghosting & Falling

Like a ghost I’m falling forward
and with each step forward
to catch myself
I fall the faster.
A strip of rubber
a ribbon of hoop
a collection of sticks
that roll;
running, static
running, static
running, static...

And while I do this
a thousand songs
occupy my mind
and a thousand throngs
cavort and crash
about me and only when
I imagine
my native brother
alone in the wilds
both vulnerable
and threatening
to every challenge
and every adversity
and then all the birds
and all the small game
and the tracks of enemies
come into focus…

I collect the data
assess it and
discard what I don’t need.
Collect the data
assess it
discard…

Good things too, come from
conflicts and collisions
I have been part of many
Moby Dicks, even the parts
that suck, lived every
conflict of man
against man,
against himself,
against society,
against rule of law,
against Nature—
Ahab had even knocked up a teenage Quaker!—
every conflict, I’m against
and have survived
with lungs on fire and
drunk with the bends…

Everything is sweeping vectors
magnitudes and directions
angles of inclination
moments of inertia.
In the goodwill of
the human marketplace
the streets fold and shuffle
like decks of cards and
raucous concertina bellows
while pouting women
beautiful in their boredom
gaze down from their balconettes.
Everything comes and goes
all at once as I do, too.
I crease them
I sew them up
I clip and drag
cross a bumper crop
effortlessly slipping between
objects with a perfect economy
of motion and force,
just like the Day’s light.