The View From The Back Of My Mind

The store is never closed at the back of my mind. Thoughts are stacked like dishes on a drunken boat. I like diversions. The Ganges flows in my blood. I’ve got eight arms and a voice like Iggy Pop, which is tricky, because I can’t sing. But once my instinct for speech has been triggered and I’m feeling a little blue I can chatter like a chafing dish in Chattanooga. I once meditated on a pillow and suddenly I found I was flying around the room with big swollen fingers and a red brick. It’s always exciting to leave the earth behind. It diminishes into a little star and I see the ways of the nail have to do with well-placed blows. I like circles with red bark and botany and whistles. Even quarks have charms. I’ve been ghosted so many times I feel like a phantom. All I ask is to be exhumed. I will lead you to a body of evidence in the mouth of a dollar bill. Have you ever heard a train signal in the middle of the night? My seclusion is gargantuan. But I like it that way. I do a lot of deep study and if I see a broken string on a guitar I will be a teacher of entanglements. I’ve been to Bihar and seen its many buttons. A Hindu swami with bony elbows and a twinkle in the eye once told me that if I ever enter a village of parallels I should keep my analogies at room temperature. Time is a door. One it’s been opened, the movie can begin. The color of expansion fills the screen and the conditions on the train are luxurious. Even the folklore surrounding dinner has a scent. And why shouldn’t it? The snow is transformative. And the washing machine is ageless. The lines of a poem should weigh like a tidepool between the lips. The mind is a drunken boat. We fix our coordinates around certain expectations, then launch ourselves into the river with the darkness wrapped around our waist. The night is a mélange of dripping stars and misshapen metaphors smoldering among the bones. Gypsies doing flamenco around the fire. Polymers forming resins. Here I am in my robes of science. But what good are they? I feel naked as a punchbag on the bright side of redemption, and simple as a blade of grass.