On a Wednesday afternoon

rubbing my face in the practical joke

of every hand-me-down truth

how I missed what I lost

in the mess of losing it

as a tourist in the backyard

of my own life while dreaming

of porcelain, and now

I'm at a motel parking lot in Idaho, cursing

Lucifer, ancient need, these damn flip-flops,

standing under the Ho-Hum marquee

with a sandwich bag of weed, a steady pull

of amnesia in my pocket, but Oh

how I love this moment -- jaywalking

before the careening ambulance,

the heart victims in their motorized boxes

muttering, YOU DUMB BITCH!

Ah Yes, the calligraphy of havoc!

Forget the contraindicated heart

or the retractable pronouncements of fate, love,

all those familial accidents;

every dirty particle recedes, is renewable

in its scarred gob of light, my blood

is lime, a zing like 7 Up guns my spine

I've left the parking lot to just carouse the median line:

Kill the headlights, put it in neutral

this landscape is dubbed to a sapphire hush

and I am at ease, I am at ease.

ANDY KRACKOW

Krackow is a Burlington poet.