walking poem

[mcbrat]

The state of the sunny world where everyone’s smoking and no one touches each other. The signs and billboards point and beckon— sheep can’t read the sheep analogy doesn’t work anymore. I guess the kids can’t read either. Steinbeck is not mourning. Huxley is not rolling in his grave. The lamentation of inevitability is not a real sadness. It is not a real grave. Bob Dylan’s still alive he called me this morning through my Bluetooth speaker— you know the one that listens to everything we do and do not say. I got close enough to myself to stop the roaring of my mind and I’m pretty sure that’s good enough. The false wisdom in the path of the world’s landslide— it will slide. The water will be clear until it is not. And the end will be near until it has passed. A screaming relief slaps my cheeks with cold air as the park bench also watches and listens. It is a calm heart in a storms eye of perpetuity. A constellation of moments stretching further than I pondered even as a child who discovered infinity. We can wake in a pile of ash and secret knowledge. I’m almost sure then the air will also be cold.