Set the controls for the heart of the sun

Penned in class a fortnight or two ago, because I wasn't thinking about silly geese like #OccupyInsertCityHere, the amazing coincidence of human rights as grave concern when violated over tubs of black gold, weapons grade domestic scowling, or class, all markers of an existence that is nothing more than an existential slow ride take it easy towards Ragnarok.

This, 'tis a ritual, a necessity like once upon an adolescence when life was that & death. Now, the same, but I know more, know I'm often wrong yet am better equipped to handle it. 

It means more, & less. So, this. Staccato, pretty on the page. Spoken, a terror. Cut & stripped & stitched, then discarded then restitched then dropped.



Until a name & a series of sonic swells that burned through stanzas rising & falling, cliche of cleansing fire, sure, but there it is. Spark not the piece, but its inherent sense, the result of its spellwork upon memory & illusion (usually the very same thing), composed over as many hours as I've slept over this time & was it a waste (see below, no), is it a-okay (I can say, no) but what can I say. Great art will never be in my hands, two pair, now & then, then I fold into an eleventh, twelfth caffeine, but there is nothing else. Less than nothing after censoring here but not on the sheet because who's ever going to see past this safe pivot, I'll never show & tell. I'm not crazy.

[redacted: 1]

Whirligig hours spin the bottle, neck
jaundiced & craning
out white noise to steal
a face in tarot-littered streets, to purloin
(over a bus, a bridge) a story from a crowded being. Piercing
the smog, a solar song
whose staves prop up the dead
left, right, here in the chest, though not in vain
if I could be permitted to freeze

[redacted: 3-7]

No commentary on anything that would mean a damn thing to anyone but me, & that is a-okay. Art is its own vent. There is no other reward, sometimes.

You must do what makes you happy.

Might as well get up for work.

Sure, there's some red stuff, & some blue. No Baba Yaga, though.