if nothing stops us in our way

"Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine"
- Sterne, Tristram Shandy


sounding hourly through heated wax
a hobbled horse sours to salt
delivered in pewter ice-buckets
broken-edged and ripe off-vine
urge wavering to eat out tonight
a shortcut orthodox stile
bite a hand in a haversack

over public acreages an ergodic footpath
reaches a long fact escrow
booked a ticket to east gondwana
belly-dance opera en-route
often clapped if espied the dying ox
apt to be cropped on the croup
if caught coughing along the tracks

roundabout bereavement mechanic
black biotechnology
grey the withers I once piloted
or maybe I engineered
abuse scandal breeding more suicides
swarming barnbred podunk cousins
of flies in the laboratories

roomservice the paperless emi-
grés, tin lids binding a time
bright mirador of the empire
sinking under equipment
dies the days diary rays retire
spine cancer and ossified
riparian seep unconfirmed

by edgewood arsenal stropping afore
the enfilading panther
hive-mind-ripening wildernesses
oubliettes portside gamble
distiller of strongbox supermarkets
don't forget the merry men
negatives stuffed in mattresses

so if the pony express don't know him
he'll send them a telegraph
signed the wire with a quantum clot
under sea moans empathic
bones of his best friends made cameos
hedgers gripping the dry grey loaves
hoping somehow to survive the wreckage