Day 10,807

Still don't know why I'm here, what I am, or what this place actually is metaphysically-speaking.

I just like to remind myself of those facts once in a while. Then I get on with the excitement of going to see The Dark Knight on Friday. Woooooooo!

Travelogue

Port of origin: Parts unknown.

To be alone
as all living things are alone
secluded, if not in placement
then in soul.

To bear a mind-sewn quilt
stitched in the steady and unsteady
hand of the senses.

To wear a mantle
of inseparable flesh
and know someday you will be parted.

To fight with intangible why,
run with, to, or from intangible
why and watch it endless elude.

The plot of the weave
of a fabric softener sheet
and the fractal arms of a spiral galaxy
equal in mystery.

The incoming birdsong,
the rabbit's movements in the overgrown yard,
the unexpected chemical burn of love
equally out of control.

I did not puncture the window screen.
I did not make the screen.
I did not make the air and light
passing through the puncture.
I did not even make this eye,
or the ink, or the language.

To inherit all the world from past
and dwell in a body of luck.

To crew this shell of compounded fortunes
appointed by chance, fated to choose.

To send forth ships like leaf skeletons
and wait for word of other shores.

To grow drowsy with the effort
of such metaphysic alchemy.

To put the pen down
with nothing resolved.

The Rand McNally Blues

I was searching the lines of a book for answers when the car entered a new state. The name of the state was Summer, and we were cruising through it for several miles before I finally looked up. Like Iowa and Georgia before, the landscape was hardly any different. I should have recognized it immediately from dozens of road trips past, the ramshackle snow cone stands and rusted gas station oases, grass longer than a mother's hair, swifts and swallows skimming the erupted roots. Yet too much had changed: someone built a silver skyscraper on a distant ridge, the dust was less flavorful, and inside my head the clockwork cogs had been swapped out for a pulsing atom of quartz. To be honest, I felt comforted that I could burn the book anytime, let its ashes trail out the passenger window without a care. But that book was our atlas, and the roads aren't well marked, and lately I think all the compasses point inward. A fork is inevitable, but for now it's Red Arrow Highway all day.

Staple Back Into Place This Mortal Coil...

Tim Russert.
Stan Winston.
George Carlin.

Enough with the dying already! We can't take much more of this! We needed these people, you know? Hell, Carlin alone was among the great pillars of reality. Now who's going to keep us in check?

Jon Stewart, I'm looking at you.

R.I.P., guys. You will be missed.

Dearly Departed

He was gone, just like that.
Not even a note.
No smiling geisha with an armful
of cryptic cue cards slowly revealed.
The skywriters held no clues.
We looked into the spinning of spiders
and only found unconnected webs.
The radiation blast
did not capture his shadow.
He was a phantom almost overnight.
Gone, just gone.
The court reporter read it back:
It wasn’t anything we said.
He was just gone.
So why was that purple tabby all a-grin?
I bet it had something
to do with that blonde girl
and all her colored gemstone baubles.
Drink us, they said
but his blood samples were all
clean as the bib of an old sleeping nun
in the shadow of a peach tree.
He must be chasing after the tail of summer.
Must be.
It’s the only conclusion that
makes no sense.