I'm supposed to list my obsessions. OK, fine:

1. The ferry maintenance depot near my apartment.
2. The human body personified as root vegetables – potatoes, turnips, rutabagas.
3. I can’t remember Jack Shit, though I’ve met him often enough.

Mostly the last one – it's like trolls under the bridge have custody of my memory. Pay the fee in princess skin or thou shalt not pass. I look in my wallet, but no Ben Franklin. That look of his makes me think he feels sultry in his lingerie, hidden under his coat. I feel pretty too, Ben.

Maybe my missing to-do lists and kodak moments are lost in a time warp – if we rip the veneer of space away will we expose its mechanism, its springs and bomb wires? What if lost time is a pendulum swinging in the clock case with its balls cut off – fixed like a steer so it can't reproduce. Or memory baked into adobe bricks, daubed with mud, stacked into walls in reenactments of the Alamo, where we always lose.

Someone said it’s the journey, not the destination, blah blah blah. I feel miles itchy with distance under my skin, yet the tundra of my kneecaps and knuckles are insurmountable. The rocks quit, the mountains quit, even the pavement quits before it ends down the block. With light pollution the milky way is only a candy bar. Nowhere to go from here.

Just once, contemplate Powell in 1869 – shooting the fevered waters of the Colorado river in wooden boats. Make the shift from your first gear to fifth, fourteenth, infinity. From darkness to light to fugue to black holes that leave you breathless on a far shore.

For Shay’s Word Garden and The Sunday Muse

Rue de Rivoli – "It's you! Assassin! Mon frère! 
Ah, we were but children when we joined the Legion, 
marching from Algiers under Rollet – 'Honneur et Fidélité,' eh? 
You, brave flower, fighting like a tiger in the alleyways, 
and me, bragging open brothel doors. 
The Devil or God (And which is which, in the desert?) 
a coward when we blindfolded him, 
rag carnation in his mouth, 
we shot him with our Berthiers, 
bolt-actions genuflecting in the sun. 
Did we sin? We were fools! 
We ate our bitter hearts out in that desert, 
boiled our souls with thorns and thickets. 
Riders with wind and sand rasping between our saddles and thighs… 
Oh the melody they make – say it! Sirocco! 
Now, over there, to your left, Diguet and his Montagnards 
who gave so much blood at Tuyên Quang, 
'Français par le sang versé.'
Now I merely puzzle the streets of Paris, 
a toad who buries himself in cafes. 
You say you garden now? Shadows of songbirds 
against the barn, netting and dressing them 
for your pies. 
Here! Violets for your dear wife. Tomorrow it will rain. 
Treat your blindness with care. Adieu!"

For Shay’s Word Garden and The Sunday Muse

The day slips away, a greased crow –
hours and minutes on fast wings, my hands slick
from trying to spell the alphabet backward,
cawing: “Mind your p’s and q’s!” and which is which

Waiting for Amazon to deliver a box of wind, 
open its thermals to lift my pages,
my shuffling, flapping sorrows and anthems  –
trash or wings and which is which 

My wife sends me to the pharmacy, midwife
to the season's skele-ghost and fire-nurse costumes,
the mockingbird kiosk sings for my debit card –
and which witch is which

I stop in the park and thumb coins into a rose bed,
wait for autumn to brew me a coffee –
I bang on the trash bin, demand oak trees
drop their red and yellow poems, end their masquerade

Of art and life, and tell me which is which

For Shay’s Word Garden and The Sunday Muse