CHANNELS

I left the composition books in the bath I mean the ocean today the pond last year the stream that carried the blurry mess of me through stones. Did you read me or by the time you arrived to the bed of the stream, the pages had become pulp? You can tell me. I saw you.

Before there was a distortion of sound across the water the wind of course under the water distortions still further under and within. Seaweed slime and the muting of voices from the shore. The lonely elderly woman telling her life story coming alive again to listening strangers the rescue divers carrying out emergency drills later asking her if she knew where she lived.

I texted but dropped my phone in the bath I mean the ocean the storm drain the channel of water I was hydroplaning before the car spun out of control and down into the rapids and all our communication was lost because the screen was cracked and none of the windows unrolled.

There were three of them:  low medium and high. Three I’s. The past the present the future. Three polyphoning into 3,000 Persian birds in that ancient scripture. The swoosh of their feathers when one glances up the blur of white feather. A sculpture in movement, gone.

Four seasons kept him. The 4-square of his childhood down the road. A symmetry folded in half twice, the cocktail napkin shredded by the dog that has different barks to alert him of his past creeping back to hurt him. He would eventually find the dial for the volume that had been missing for years phew. Sound again. The soundtrack to the backdrop inside. He became music he became you again.

The menu had too many choices too many pages too many tabs too many frequencies too many email addresses thousands of unopened spam. And yes I hear clunking in the cellar radio waves through the toilet you know they are listening humming at the edge of the driveway in my water-logged slippers waiting for the boy across the street to look out behind the curtains from his wheelchair and smile at me think nothing of my unwashed hair an iteration of you again.

We meet in an undisclosed location off the grid without our bogus GPSs at the border of two states of being a thousand channels multiple chapter headings with links to now not now a decade ago five years from now our lost brothers the children we never had the wars we started between us and the wars beyond us that we like the rest of the world  we would ignore.

We lie entwined on the floor of someone else’s boat anchored at the harbor of our imperfections on different pages blurred by the rain we drink with our parched mouths open.

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