From Hoop to Spiral to Stars (my mythical past)
by Dan Raphael
I never come back the way I left
only mindless can I tie knots, as if my fingers have their own discipline
when the hands knead, stroke, follow verbal cues,
music no one else can hear, like a bass player whose internal clocks wavering,
like a heart that refuses to march, swooping from tango to waltz to wildness
when the horizon disrobes and the worlds luminous ley lines
transmit to all available antennas & ears, each pond unable to censor the fish,
the water in the asphalt inhaling each note, letting none out
what would the puddle of my body be refined into by eons of pressure and neglect
like a mountain where each memory is a hushed wind,
rolling miles in million threadcount cotton,
as if each time I sneeze a thousand others might understand, feel the itch,
align the vertebra not to cook by blending but letting the ingredients socialize,
masked or not, familiar or just arrived
every time I eat something new I go where I’ve never been.
next month the café’s closed, my memorys not on the menu,
I get travel hints in the cook book store,
not all hungers can be ignored,
their devastating harmony disrupted by 2 or 3 silent players,
chewing instead of bowing or blowing, a sonata in ketchup & grease,
coming in from the rain I play the music on my shirt, connecting the dots on my glasses
grow asymmetrical prisms recoloring now with aromas, electricity,
past stains budding like april’s first, a knocking where theres no door
every time I try to circle the earth my name changes, what people know of me;
this time I’m shaved clean by anonymity in name and actions,
everythings too close together to throw for any distance.
as if the only trees are in gullies; as if all mountains are invisible
but so well spread a day doesn’t go by without climbing in place,
remembering how to fall up, how to inhale so muscular my body rushes into air
