The carpet is getting stained again
Soon after it got washed out and rinsed off
Someone dropping plops of ink upon the
Rising tatters and ragged edges
And still it looks better than it did each day
The stains spread each day
And I pass them by
Barely noticing that they have started showing up again
After all
The carpets are not mine
And I will not be the one who cleans them
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If it were my second language,
Something I had worked harder to learn–
Because it is harder to learn another language later
And I grew up a monoglot–
Perhaps I would not be so sloppy with the words
Hoard them more closely
Place them more carefully
Perhaps like coins
As one author writes
Or like jewelry
Making more beautiful those who take them up and put them on
As it is
I grew up with it
Take it for granted
Spend it all too easily
Knowing I have an ever-full store
Casting as if at a fan
And with so much effect
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It has happened again
Half of a conversation
Taking place far away from any interlocutor
Provoking rage at someone who
Was never even there
And would probably not say the things to which
Response was given
Bad enough
To realize what should have been said
Descending the staircase
So how much worse
To critique a party that nobody threw?
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A spore I cannot help but have inhaled
Hyphae spreading through me without notice until
The bloom breaks out and spreads its gills
Poisoning the ground from which it breaks
And while other fruits are still on offer
They are fewer and their stalks wither as they emerge
From soil being leached away
Unknowing hands will reach out
Grasp what shows itself on offer
Thinking it a blessing from their native soil
In which they are deeply rooted
Mycorrhizae working to no good end
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To make a day a holiday
To give a day to people
By giving a day to people
Seems a noble thing
A high honor that endures
Consider
Who gets the day
Who loses it
And how those who have it mark it
If
And it is a big if
As many ifs are
Small though the word is
The way we mark it
Is the way we ought to mark it
Then what honor is it
Really?
Ought and is aren’t the same
Of course
I know it
You know it
I think
Maybe
But there are a lot of people
Thinking that the way things are
Is the way that they must be
And I wonder if they’ve thought through what that means
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Jack arrived
And many bowed before his coming
Beards grown white dragging on the ground
Hoary humility from their gnarled frames
And no few broke to bend so
Brief though his reign may be
They clothed themselves thickly for it
Laying out lines upon the ground
Powerless in his presence
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The pseudo-sainted sought to earn acclaim
And gather glory to a sainted name
That he might greatly thereby grow his fame,
Though he may be a sacrificial goat
Thrown to the slaughter while the others gloat
Who at Stupid God’s table feast and bloat,
An offering to show the left the right
Can keep themselves still, standing in the light,
Hoping thereby to elide the blight
They represent, the one that plagues us all
Who seek to never be in that long hall
Where Stupid god conducts the running ball.
Distracting, they seek still to draw all in,
That Stupid God’s dominion might begin.
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Ragged breathing
Throat raw from it
When I can breathe
Because it stops and starts again
And I panic
Ever so slightly
Every time
How can I not?
The running will begin again
And soon
And I have no way to flee from it
Fevered though my flight may try to be
Yet such highs rarely fare well
The descents from them
Crashing down
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Yes, 200. And I’m not done yet…
They stand upon the plain with fist upraised
Amid the rain and think they offer praise
By buying pain to fill up others’ days
With coin they make with fire stoked by pages
That they have taken, stealing, while they rage
Who for their sake had spent both youth and age
In labor, hoping thus to wisdom spread.
But in those fires do those hopes lay dead,
And they spend and feed those fires without dread
Of what will come when all the coin is gone.
The debt to Stupid God they bear along
Will then come due, impoverish the throng,
Which would be well, would they suffer alone,
But they will not before Stupid God’s throne.
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Because inspiration sometimes comes oddly…
Leaning up against the bar and listening, watching, like his angel had told him before she took him up into the heavens.
Drink in hand, draining away slowly, savoring each sip just a little bit longer to keep a quiet peace inside.
But then the piano starts playing, and he knows this tune, this old standard of bygone days that still speaks in strains to ears not born since long after the composer died into the dust, man.
Synth plugs into amp, a toggle is flipped, and the mellow sound of a rubber-mouthpieced tenor sax swells up under the piano strokes, letting the keys lead and ringing along with them in a harmony bluer than the seas below, than the skies that they had left behind, cleaner than the corridors had ever been.
And the solo, when it comes, because it comes, steps carefully around where the keys part, and if it’s a mulligan, it’s one people are glad to have taken.
A quick couple of toggles, a perfect shift down to Eb from Bb, rubber becomes steel, and a nasty, guttural funk backbeat joins throbbing ivories and sopranino echoics, punching up counterpoint in visceral pulses, buzzsaws humming in short bursts behind.
Let them look and listen and wonder what else is there.
Eyes close, body rocks, and all creation falls away.
Lyrics shift and call for something further afield, and the progression of music follows along, swing to bop to funk and further forward.
A second key under the left thumb is pressed, and the music drops an octave, slapping bass with sawtooth wave from mimicry of well-cut cane punctuating in three-octave jumps and sudden falls protesting words, going low to accent the high and going high to fill the silences between.
Bliss, man. Who can know such joy as this?
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Elliott RWI 