Shift
SHIFT
Shift: A move or cause to move from one place to another
The temperature can’t make up its mind. It drives
my biology crazy. Can’t keep up with the constant
shift. Am I hot or cold or both? I sneeze. Pound
antibiotics as if the festering stuff in my brain could be cured
by pharmaceuticals when they’re part of the problem. The shit
makes me barf. I don’t like it. I turn on the radio and shift
stations from the monotonal delivery of bad news
on NPR. More stories the devil turned god
and vice versa. A very bad crystal ball predicts as violent
storm on the horizon. I choose to eat cake. I am
Dorothy smacking my lips with vanilla icing and watching
my own lost self running straight into the tornado. I change
Paths. Turn the station to a beautiful cover of Leonard Cohen’s
Hallelujah. A woman cracks her voice through a slide guitar
and I swear she brings down rain.
You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
I turn west and the sky’s on fire. I wear
a green dress. A gift from my daughter as if it can keep
hope or just keep me alive. I walk through
orange leaves like I’m walking through a miracle. But the gods
turn their backs on me. Tell me to find my own
way. Maybe it’s time to shift my pace.
I lose the dress the very next day. Leaves have fallen
off trees over night. Bare branches scrape against a cloudless
sky. Birds take flight. Leave town. Crumpled cans
of Pabst Blue Ribbon litter a dirt alley
I haven’t noticed in sixteen years. I follow the cracked
sharp edges crushed into red white and blue
in jumbled letters that make no sense. I am Gretel.
There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
I follow the trail to the man slumped on a gutted
sofa. Thick hands rip cans from plastic choke holds.
He guzzles 12 ounces in single gulps.
Belches rumble like dry thunder.
Clenched fists open and close.
I shift my path and trace the last threads
of light. A dog stares from a slant in curtains
from a brown house with a brown yard. I think
it must be good to be a dog.
I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
The moon rises over the mountain. Hours earlier
a friend in New York photographed the moonrise. I wonder
how we can see the same moon at different times. There
is science to this but science isn’t working
on this road of broken cans. We are both
connected and separated by this chunky white rock turned sulfur
in the early dark of late dusk. The man builds
a wall of cans now. He takes the whole thing down
with a sledge hammer. Then starts again. This goes on
for hours. This goes on until the jolt of his blows
shifts the moon’s orbit. Now we can all see the moon
at the same time. Have you shifted with it? Have you looked?
Some of my music to go with it. When it comes to guitar, I'm a total outsider artist. I just make this stuff up and paint with sound.
Click to viewFinally, I really did find a sofa tonight while I was running with the ghost of a man crushing Pabst Blue Ribbon cans:
