|
{recalling a few details} paul adrian mabelis It’s true, I broke bread once with a basset hound, crumbled up some rye in the palm of my hand let it dry into dust so it could be licked off, testing to see if the blood scrubbed completely away in scent as well as in stain. By now, the scent of the broken beer bottle – the pain of a busted pabst blue ribbon, embedded in my epidermis. Yes it’s true I broke a promise once or twice, or as many times as I ever made a promise I shouldn’t have, but that’s why you don’t make a promise you can’t keep. And so it was, that I was baptized by the Genesee, a Seneca word for pleasant valley but the tally to date, a high rate of failure, especially in the public schools, record levels of violence and stupidity - and in the entertainment district, bleach-blonde barbecue air, the incendiary light of nightclubs and downbeat constables coagulating on the corner saying not everything is as pleasant as it seems. Reams of paper propping up some pauper or peasant Hoping tomorrow would be employed with a more proper labor- poetry was certainly a net cast out on the vibrating surface of the world, but at the same time, think of a man who casts a fishing line with not enough weight at the end of it, it flails backward in the wind, in some cases, gets tangled in his arms catching nothing but himself. To attach music was to garnish the line with a lure, baiting, charming, intoned with a fragrant depression of character akin to crying. I would be lying if I said I didn’t think of a lyre. Here now in the freefall back to my beginning, I always wanted to thank one of my teachers for what they had taught me, for what they had let me teach myself but the lessons are not always wrought from any animate object and the teacher is not guaranteed to be around by the time the lesson is learned. |
