Wednesdays are for pre-apocalyptic poetry. Had I a time machine to 1858, what would I have written? Maybe I don't need one nowadays. (Is it just me, or are those cliffs closer?)
This is a bit of rummaging around in the ol' noggin to see what's in there, and what might be clearly articulated thought in months or years. Now it's mist, vapor, bubbling up in fragments of images and colors.
War, destruction, responsibility, the past, personal shortcomings and progress, stars, struggle, forgetting, remembering, and the undeniable yellow of the zinnia outside my window clatter down the mental stairs in a heap.
Bang.
Once I Had a Bicycle
Once I had a bicycle
small and red and black
I'd go out into an endless June morning
(as young as I was)
to meet it
Gate squeaking
Like the blue jay in the green tree
The air would wash my face and behind my ears
(Like mom always told me)
Now I have a bicycle
big and red and black
That goes really fast
but
Sits dusty and forgotten
While I trade pecan shade
for Plato and grenades
Choosing to sit inside
telling people how to live
My face lit by the endless glare of the blue and white screen
Droops off my shoulders
But the heights and grass and dew
can be un-abandoned, can't they, mom?
Can't they, dad?
Visited anew, running up the hill towards better days
on the mountain breeze
And old bicycle chains re-greased?
A twilight road unfolds, calling towards purple distance vast
To…I don’t know where
My salt and pepper head shakes at the marvel, and is young again and as old as the worn down old mountains
The fireflies first
Then the stars
Glinting with an icy sheen
Billow in their multitudes
Whispering down from Infinity
about the fiduciary responsibility
of the Living
to my up-stretched arms
In a Universe of two way streets
What will you give back, son?
I could finish this, but I think I'll go and bring the Smudge horse an apple.
Outside.
Josh