Easy there, it’s still your deal, your call
—not everything has meaning.
Primary colors, gulls flying sideways
news a continent away. You choose.
So much else is imposed on you, why
not grab the chance to play favorites?
Yeah, fuck their top ten and the horse
they came in on. Besides, who cares?
Gale warning, nor’easter, yet again.
If today’s news had been different…
another thought swept away…If just
today remains, then all meaning’s there.
What’s heard set down in clay /
words begetting new words on a page, no erasures /
more words, more words than sounds, no erasures /
type set in lead, word storms bound in books /
letters on a flatscreen backglow with no volunteers for permanence.
Where you are right now
can you yell so loud that
no one else will hear you?
*
Like in a van headed west
somewhere out in Nevada,
a sunset yelp or scream?
*
That time adrift alone off
Fagasa can’t count because
all those terns were listening.
*
And once when I didn’t know
that she was still there to hear
I let my voice escape, go free.
Incense ashes never vanish.
The smoke, the stick, the scent
might have never existed, but…
*
I mean the wind is unseen but
all the shadows refuse to stop
moving like something alive.
*
Whatever goals I had have
hitchhiked off with a laugh
leaving me here, on a park bench
near a children’s playground
watching the limbs of young au pairs.
John Enright: Reality Salad 