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.
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