justwrite 25 march

you can tell when the fell swoop wins in one there are unhung portraits in hidden galleries behind my eyes I am smiling in wild style and imagining the pile of ideas collecting being sent in my direction this morning on the bus a no-fuss priest with black cassock and coat and duffel bag appeared to be a surfer from Australia with blonde ponytail and slight moustache but his costume included a bible of biblical proportions many cubits high and wide and deep and this leap of faith carried him no more than three stops and atop his seat perched this preacher and upon his face he laced a smile almost a smirk but on the near side the polite side gliding along through songs and psalms humming no harm but in the middle of a secret joke hopefully the rest of us would laugh too if we knew and I wanted to catch his eye unhatch his disguise and receive a conspiratorial wink enough for me to think I understood which would be good because there’s so much I don’t and I won’t be doing so for a long while so I’m smiling here hoping for a sign but instead he’s off this bus and it’s mine to define to decide as I like and the right answers too far away too chancy to say out loud we are proud of our own celebrity we are deciding how much frying can really be managed our egos are bandaged and the cookies are hidden away we play our fingers in lingering lines typing blind and hiking behind the sun following along the strong-armed lakes the crooked rivers shivering into the sunrise we are surprised to find bread instead of cake but there is no mistake and we take as we are given we receive we have three chances to be good or to be turned into goons too soon we are alan paton too soon we turn sideways toward Africa too soon we are imagining our own scripts on the lips of others before these are written we are tripping over our fingers our tongues are hung out to dry and all the crying games stop toppling over pop hopping on down the bunny trail to no avail neverfailing always wailing out some tune or other crooning encouragement from the battlements the ramparts and all along those other watchtower parts