The Road Ahead

The road ahead is free and clear. The light disparages nothing. Let’s be like that. A man hardened by loss in a Dakota parlor.

Coleridge visits me in my sleep. Responsive headlights pivot left to right. Clang clang. He sits down at an old piano with cracked ivory keys and plays “The Old Piano Roll Blues.” Heavy metal angels add some gutsy vibrato and blues licks.

I’m on cruise control. I’m as natural as a garden hose on Friday. I’m walking on a high wire, singing hymns and doing backflips.

I have automatic collisions in my harmonica beard. Plug it in see what happens. I’m a murmurer and a squirmerer. I can relate to your spoon, if not your soup. Subtlety has a home in the blues. There’s a clapper in my bell honey, and a morsel on my fork. I’m a soft touch in a blue box. You can find me easy among the trees. Or standing on the rocks.

Oblivion has not been modified. It’s the same oblivion as the old oblivion. A quiet old road disappearing in the distance. A puddle of sound in a lonely room in the south of Arkansas.

Would you like to sip some quarks of wheezekey? I have the absorption of clay. I’m not always prompt. I celebrate the black of Rembrandt’s backgrounds.

The operation is quiet and grave. The doctors are huddled over a body. The heart is a fist of lightning veined and red.

Mississippi garden. The blaze is intense. There is thunder in the distance. A doctor looks up and wipes his forehead.

Planet Earth is a long walk in a blue palace.

My stethoscope is thirsty. Speed leaves Dallas in the dust. There is a howl coming from a room in the house. Resilience is getting up after getting punched.

Again.

I’m driving all night. Navigating the night. I have a bucket of paint for the gate. I’m feeling visibly invisible. Granite acrobatics on the summit of a hill. It’s a riddle. Palomino on a ridge above Reno. I feel the pungent aroma of sage in the early morning. Life is immaterial as a wind. Scribbles in the water.

Ambiguity begs for study. I drag the hills into the night. Insects flit by the light. Even the door has a singular beauty. The floor is Mediterranean tile. The wealth of the external is in the mind. The value of the internal is in the hallelujah of the skin. This is the doctrine of the rapier.

Take this ax and split some wood. I’m soaked in New Orleans.

If you go deep enough you don’t even notice the current. But the stripper wants her money and this is a capitalistic world. Thought will only get you so far. For the rest you’ll need a trunk and a tire iron.

Ear on a broom. Employment as a drum. Nipple ripple. Ripple on a nipple. Language is the glue of our species. But if you go a day and don’t open your mouth the universe will walk into your head and sit down. Open a book. Show you all the secrets. Show you all the stars.