THE MARQUEE

I have wandered miles of fretted stone steps, leaving behind hallowed ivory towers. Night's bright herald climbs the morning marquee.

And here comes the daily news, a sleep walking throng that feeds upon advertisements, clothed in a panic of slave made shirts and pants, laundered money. And migrations. Ivy covered porticoes were not made for this, nor for brave new offices of glinting glass, nor the ignorance of streets filling with people who take such stuff seriously.

I emerge blinking into the relative safety of sirens and other ongoing illusions, there's a pink one, a blue one, a black one erupting karma that gushes over our days of tar sand drought.

Tabitha meows to roust me out, snuggles under the covers to purr briefly.

Now she's parked at the foot of the bed. There's an apple breakfast to be made. Here the borders of sanity surrender.

the immediate sense of a soul miner's lament

very foggily a cross word puzzle

is entranced at the Junk Car paperwork office

where fine layers of gray dust are gleaming

the door gapes open

a silent scream

a pencil doing cockroach sketches

where the car henge labyrinth ends

in car culture's revenge

twenty seven across --

what are the round black dots

on a lady bug's red Volkswagen back

for?

I am amazed at Big Bee's persistence, day after day mining nandina blooms overhead. Innumerable little white shells litter down. Sanity is not counting them.

There is a certain satisfaction in having arrived at a good definition. Let's just say, here in the midst of everyday territory, that no really better one suits everyone. And this green tea monologue is at least strung on a series of grammatical beads. Isn't it as though the bus at last got rolling? But this is, after all, an ordinary back yard, nothing here to fear. It is, truly. There are aerospaces here. Empty places of the mind. Vapors of the Junk Car escapees.

Gradually a vastness overtakes. And there comes an ill-defined point where the cross words lose traction. Emanations shiver the gray dust. And something speaks through the spaces and girders, it can't be stopped.

twenty eight down --

poetry with feet of clay

a Formula One race car

rhythm of the day

now it's talking

get down!