Missed another badly the other day,
One upped, and down the path alone
Wondering how such brazen absurdities
Could calculate and determine sanctity
From sound and symbol and the buzz
Of the crowd watching.

The tight rope, the pleasure mine,
Please sit down.
We had our chance,
Preparing for the worst as a sort of separation
Of one idea from the next, period.
The use of dash and comma does not a sentence make.

Self reflexive is the wanderer,
Glistening, bright as wet dawn, listening,
Listing out the angels of better nature and
Pride and the down fall, like rain fall.
The slow accumulation of found objects
Left just where they lie, like catch and release,
Like making money from food and clothes
And other people walking by.

In a great sack, the sky redeems further emptiness and stars.
Reveals synapses and gaps of our understanding,
Our standing among other things,
Inert and real and a bit bulimic.
Starved and gorged at the same time,
She says hello and whispers goodbye
In a brush of clothing, a hush of sleeping,
Sounds as distant chatter covered by the rail cars
On their schedule or off by a little bit, going by.

We went by together once,
As two who had paid their fare.
The works are for the junkies now,
Using up the wires like oil derricks or
Plasma drives pleading for red blood donors,
Any type, any age, pleading.

It’s a mouthful, a way to forget hate,
Like sleep or travel or boredom.
Is it worth the energy anymore to say so
Or to say it isn’t so.
We all know how the air blows
When the big thunderclouds roll off toward the plains.

How new ideas take shape under just such conditions
And move on, adapted to dissipate.
Colossal forgiveness, allowance,
Tradition substituting for embarrassment, over reaching,
Calculating a drop in temperature,
A rehash of breakfast
As the trapeze swings itself out to its place of rest,
Most down and hanging.

We are no longer light,
Not giving in,
No longer a breeze, exhale in flame.
No longer sure, practicing for ceremony, hush money,
Make it better money,
Alimony of almonds and pillows and oil.

Some sweet thing we had,
Covered in each other
Even at great distance from ourselves.
No longer one or satisfied but
Edging up to hunger’s gate,
Wide eyed and catching up

As the lists let the lips pass and
Away is away, some other day,
Lithe and no longer obligatory.
To come to rest and yet
Passionately asking as to motion and silence,
Duration and the flash of pans dropped
Or thunder collecting drums of a different number,
Reverberating.

By Rolf Stavig

7/29/2023