Divergent Path

1)  The Ontological Path, or Poison

Something exploded under my car today,

Some Bakelite explosion,

Hit not once but twice,

Driver side then passenger.

The left side of the vehicle

Goes spinning into one zone of ether

And the right side another.

The trick’ll be, I know, to avoid to middle.

How it divides, how bass

Clefs become treble, how one side

Of the street does butter-smooth jazz,

Crooked wrench blues the other,

One side hocks, ham the other –

I will sit and watch the division

(The shards and caesura of impact-resistant glass,

The rippling muddled upholstery,

Knicks, followed by knacks

Imploding upon their nature-proof souls)

Because the driver side is hanging on a convex path

While the passenger cuts a concave swath

And I feel like a warped tissue eyelid

Flicking away an errantly fallen mote

Of guardrail.

Or streetlamp.

It does not take a large amount

Of guardrail

To play hazard

With a cornea.

Which reminds me of the dinner

Not chose – corn

On the cob and ham.

Won’t eat cobbed food

Since the incident in ‘78

Which merits a separate telling –

No, it doesn’t – corn, full-

Tooth braces, imagination

From the reader –

This is not revelatory

And everything is not necessarily

Horrific or shattering

Or allegro.

Sometimes, it’s just mundane,

It sings to its own seagull

And no amount of brimstone

Or fog

Is going to make it jump

Or andante.

So I have to imagine hairstyle,

Pretend appearance,

Facilitate behavior,

Assimilate emotion.

No hallway too narrow,

No corner too wide

Or lento.

As we are so wonderfully done

As we have so wonderfully done

In with each other

Poisoned sheets and tendentious

Comforts not passed.

I offer no judgment.

I provide no proof.

Here there is no salvation

I confide in no truth

The stasis of this preamble.

I am perjured on the stone

Of definition gone gray:

Matter of what is known

And of what is known

About what is known.

Such as you.

Such as us

The one, the other.

If nothing else

We can always tell them

The daughter was never violated

If that is known (wink

Wink, nod nod).

Wink back.

2) The Epistemological Path, or Cure

As we are so wonderfully done by

In with each other,

I know the water jug,

Or lawn bag,

Or fallen barricade,

That bounced from first

The left front

To the right rear

Was no true explosion.

Just as I know the right

To poetry must be earned,

Either with word

Or by deed, just

As I know the path

To you must be earned,

Minus the tales,

Without the lessons of higher

Math, without the counting of beat

Metronomic in pulse,

I know.

It sings to its own seagull,

This loss of self

Embraced in the path of you,

And like that not chosen,

That not chosen

As we are so wonderfully

Reminded by our staccato doneness

By each other,

These, too, are comforts

Not passed, but passed by.

To confide in no truth the force

Of the response, to perjure upon no stone

The nod, the knowing wink

Back to where

We were.

© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved