It’s like a sixth sense
depending on how you count,
the way you feel it in gearbox,
the way you take the tension, you hear
it in the engine, that almost
right smack there in your mouth
organ grinder out of tune
that taste you admit you miss,
the song as it laps itself
a sound like a lonesome light,
the war crackle humming from
some ancient shelf in your mind.
Here it was the dance of dust motes
the morning window and the bedroom closet,
a Disney train on the wall
that shifted in capered in the dark.
Lightning storms of static
beneath the blue blanket
dragging sparks through my hair.
Hidden reading in secret by flashlight
because I had to know
what happened next. Rain and stars
and animals, only a stranger to
every friend. I don’t know
what stuck with you. I don’t know
which parts are gone.
It is only over now in the after,
past tenses and wild swings.
Collapsed into antiquity,
apocryphal volumes and ancestral tales,
eras and ages vague islands,
hairstyles and girlfriends and
long dissertations on
why my boss is dumb.
Over and over the fading lore
passes through the wounds and
aches of the old ape,
life’s cruel slapstick and
cereal in front of the TV,
something sweet and easy,
cartoons and troubled comforts as
the world forgets me, then
remembers me too well.