Thursday morning at a gas station on I-40 near Tucumcari, New Mexico:
“You quit touchin’ that stuff afore I knock you right out that door” the fat man in shorts, knee socks, and sandals says to the boy who looks down, down at whatever is down inside, that meets whatever is down on the floor where it is quiet for a moment..
where he paints in secret swirls, with imagined colors, circles on the dirty linoleum, a dusty mandala- intricate shapes of conjured dreams, where he is absorbed for while in the width and whorls of the soundlessness behind words, the protection of quiet. For a moment, a minute perhaps, the boy is without a name and the wheel on the floor is the fiery wheel of a chariot, and he breathes as it spins in emerald rainbows.
There is no fat man. There are no chains.
“This is my body, broken for you..”
“Get yer ass out to the car, boy”
“Do this remembrance of me..”
David Weber, 2010
You lost me. I must have been a couple of years too late for the sixties to have a point of reference. Did you have some paranormal visit from Hunter S. Thompson, or what? I will ponder it a bit and see if I can get a hint. At this point my flat hand is just sweeping over my head making a huge swishing noise that no one but me can hear. Damn, clearly I need some darker low lights in this blonde head of mine.
Rebecca..I love the poems best that sneak up on me later and whisper, “Aha!” Maybe this one will do that for you sometime..if it doesn’t, blame me for being too subtle!
Part of it: Christ doesn’t take away suffering, but is present in it..
…your poetry widens the gaping hole inside me and asks me to jump in…