New Poem: "Future Ago" (draft 1.5)
Future Ago
See, at first I thought lightning
was the blueprint for what happens
to the ground in an Californian earthquake,
and then I realized the pastry-shaped doodle of the Moon
in a kid’s drawing of a storm at night
was about the only thing that was getting it right,
and then out of nowhere
there came a song about narcissism,
and blood on the riverbanks of the Blackstone,
and when I brought the bow across the string
of the violin I found inside my reflection
I was speechless; I heard the backwards-masked music
of my own desire
and that’s when all the notes
blossomed visible in mid-air, grew like seeds afloat
on the sunbeam of my distraction.
And then the notes turned into flesh and blood
and then they turned into you,
nude except for a white robe and dancing before me
in your bedroom, a place a lot like parts of Norway:
beautiful and ice-cold; a place I’d never been
and then I pounded on the drum set you set before me
an official, rock and roll Indian drum set
and I rocked to make you flesh and blood
and I rocked to keep you from dissolving into mirage
and the neighbors never started moving away;
why do you think I’m lying to you?
And then I blew into the bugle you gave me
(even though no angels showed up announcing doom)
and I found it difficult to imagine
the quiet of 7 am in a moneyless neighborhood
being shattered with a blast of an abstract classical fugue
but that's exactly what happened
when I closed my eyes:
you kissed me and I found an ago in the future
and I found it hard to believe that someone could have
abandoned a kite in a tree branch
easy to reach
but that's exactly what happened
when I allowed myself to imagine it,
and I could hear an argument
a man and a woman screaming at each other
in a window I was passing by;
I couldn’t make out the words
and I wouldn’t make out the words if you paid me
and then the winds of their hostility
almost took me off my feet on the sidewalk
and then the wind did lift me off the sidewalk
and into the air
and I couldn’t reach a tree limb to grab
to keep me tethered to the earth,
and I couldn’t reach a conclusion
safe to share with anyone I know
I was part of an illustration
in a children’s book about thunderstorms
and I could not be reached for comment