February 8, 2004

• In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. – Camus

  Activities
  
  Just for a moment, I’m
  Going to step off the spinning world
  To breathe space
  Between the rafters
  Cheering
  Sometimes stomping 
  For the winners.

  Shooting off into the night, I’m
  Drifting slantwise and
  Crosswise like mirrors
  Mouth likewise.
  
  In the passing, I’ll
  Rest my feet on
  The oaken veneer
  Waiting patiently for
  The sartorial burping
  Of an aloof Meursault.

  There is no exit here;
  We are nodding to mysteries
  Breathing space like a fan
  On stickiest days
  Or whispering lips.
  
  —
  
  
  
  —-
  
  in the town where I was born (jack and jill sat on a wall)

  Slow like a snake through weeds, a periscope telescopes up the side of a cloudy mountain home, hugging the countours, stopping at the second window for a peek.  Hunched over bones and a steaming mug, a large hulk of a man bows his head with sleep and satisfaction.  Blinking, an eye examines a solitary room, straining like a candle flicker.

   

  There were questions about his allegiance.  Here was the paperback writer penning notes for future reference.  He was not trusting.  He would not trust his eyes, searching for the colorless noumena wrapped in the folds of origami cranes buried in a rainbow jar.  He makes his own, hoarding a thousand, each crease a labor of love.  Captured in lonesome confinement, he made use of his time.

   

  He was a spy at first cry, tiny arms flailing in a stale room; blue henchmen wore skullcaps and masks.  Bright lights flashed before tracers in a little man’s eyes and he squinted, shaken by the world around him.  They would have their way with this perspicacious wordsmith; he would not escape.  His back and shoulders were well-known, kept on file, seen perpetually up-close in a binocular world.
  
  He was yet a spy at the age of ten, ducking behind couches, wrapping himself in curtains, shooting guns at the spiral slide, and catching cryptic notes falling from the sky.  Here’s what they say: Old Mother Hubbard sat on her tuffet.
  
  Cows jump into the curds and whey.
  
  He sneezed; they blinked.  He donned his fedora and was out the door.  There was a chase.  Cars weaving through tiny streets, shouldering through poor alleyways, spilling onto the main thoroughfare.  Each car gathered cart souvenirs, trout from the fishmonger, rugs from broken fences, bits of cabbage splashed on windshields.  He could not shake them.
  
  There was a loud crash.
  
  He was surrounded by villains too.  Gathering secrets in hand, stuffing them hastily down his corduroy shirt, he grabs his briefcase, slips into the shadows where an ambush lies in wait.  Light shining through a bottleneck exit, they nab him at the elbows.  He coughs at the tightening of his Windsor.  In the surprise, he drops goods and papers fly.  They go through his things.

   

  The cranes start flapping, each bearing a clue in words written on wings.  He has graduated to real life and in celebration, like doves released, they pepper the sky.  First as a darkened clump, then as dollops of color.

   

  They questioned him through unspeakable means but he had nothing to tell them but for name, rank and serial number; his secrets had flown away and they were drifting at thirty thousand feet.

   

  In a cold granite cell, they would visit him, one at a time, playfully alive, resting between the crooked bars of a window.  Some flew in from Bleeker Street; some came in through Fort Bragg; some came in from Pennsylvania Avenue.  All were were scrawled with decency, violence and moral life.  Squinting at daylight, he fed them hardtack crumbs. 

   

  Suffering is wrapped in many ways like sleepless nights for a hundred days.
  
  They grew fatter and he was leaner.  And each day, they flew away with his whispers, culling new voices from the city blocks and power centers around him.  A little spy in a dank little cell, he had enough secrets of his own.  So there, in a private city under beams of moonlight sneaking through cracks, he built clay men from the floor beneath him.  He put his feeling into the effort and soon, he had population.  The birds grew fatter; he was wizened; his grey people were completed devoted.
  
  He has an army of fliers and footsoldiers, colorful secrets and burgeoning emotions.  He is a spy and a general; his job is to keep it all together.  They will ask him questions and this time, arms flailing, he will have means to escape.  
  

   

  There was a struggle. 

   

  —
  
  
  
  —
  
  Honey Pie
  
  –

   

  I’m swamped!

  
  
  
  

  Matt11:28

  • 8:42 pm
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