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Monday, January 14, 2008

Gated Communities: the saga continues

Poem

I sat at the end of the road -- not my road, just one I had taken because it was the first that I found. There were no other roads in sight, only a rectangular piece of yellow paper pinned to a tree whose name I did not know. The piece of paper stated:

This is a poem:
neither the end of the road nor the beginning of all roads.

Curb your expectations!
This is only a piece of yellow paper
on which sits a poem about roads
of no consequence.

Ho hum, another poem about a road,
you think: tired poem, exhausted road,
eroded metaphor of stones
on which I bruise my feet.

Ho hum, the poem thinks:
Worn feet, stanzas on which I stumble. No rhyme. No reason.

Some insist
there is a sequence
to roads
if you can see it.

Others insist
there is a score,
but say you must be a scholar
of harmony, theory, and history
to understand
the movements
of notes.

Remember:
what you observe (is ripped
what you hear (is burned.

Find the player
to find the player.

The piece of paper was crisp and clean, as though it had been recently pinned to the tree. The letters were formed erotically with flourishes and curves. Was the poetic calligraphist saying that the poem was of no consequence or the road? If indeed this road was inconsequential, I simply had to imagine another and press on. And so I did. I turned left and saw the man in white nearing the top of a hill. He beckoned to me as he disappeared to distances beyond my sight.

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