offering to change his concerto from d to f
to please some wandering
        conductor who resembled his father.
Someone to fear & loath, love & fear.

It could be hollow reeds & willow leaves
        floating on a stagnant pond. Turning silver & brown.
& sinking
to that other world. Off or down or up. Redundantly.

& yet—what is this longing that slashes @ us?

This turning inward

& then outward; reap & then sow. The scatterings
                                                we do w/our lives
over & over & over. Punching the same old jukebox numbers.
Voltaire or Vic Damone or Gilgamesh could be sitting
                                        next to you in an airport bar
        Who would crack a smile of recognition first?
It has to do w/journeys. Leaving & never going back.
        Never arriving. Never finding the way. Never knowing
which path you're on.

It has to do w/St Ursula & 11,000 maidens on their holy trek
        & finding martyrdom @ the hands of Atila.

Antiphons & psalms. Vespers & matins. A responsoria
        for the lost & doomed & dead.

It has to do w/highways. An endless droning & tumble & fall.
Pilotless shuffling by those stumbling in & out
                                                                        of our lives.

An overture by the inept languishing poolside.
Ordering the free drinks & bitching about the service.

It has to do w/highways & getting lost for 2,000 years
        because the map was scribbled over so many times.
Scores of unknown tracing w/stubby pencils

        endlessly & endlessly & endlessly

blurring the original roads & overpasses & exits.

It has to do w/highways & centuries of the dispossessed
        slouching to another nothingness.

It has to do w/highways & the bodies of the impaled
        left to mark the way to the coliseums.

It has to do w/highways & simfonias written for
        wildflowers growing @ a child's grave.

It has to do w/highways & the temples of the insane
        built from ashes scooped from the crematoriums.

It has to do w/skimming off the top & looking down the well
        into the cold black center of the universe.

The cold black & bleak view of the mountain we all
        call home.