Gian Lombardo is editor of key satch(el) and Quale Press.





To Cry For

And another year's trashed. Into a bouquet of compounded stupidities.

What mends what's never kissed what comes, relinquished to the brief release of no grief.






The Stuff

The long note held until sound is flesh. Once flesh, it absorbs sound until only breath is left.

Alone, this exhalation lingers a bit. It takes a drink - cinnamon and red wine - until it's time to go.

Without further delay, it embarks on the grandest of journeys.

Now there's only an absence. That, and the dream of presence, the urge of hope and melancholy to break into song.






Suspect Compass

Living under an erratic clock. First, the epileptic spin forward to quarter to twelve, then reversed to ten of eight: a rush of minutes screeches to an apoplectic stop.

This eternity lasts a moment. Strictly speaking, dynasties fall and rise between tocks.

Not much of a face on this wheel: it could be just about anyone. After a rest, those appendages mark the direction of a breeze.

Back bolstered by a tailwind, what remains but to shake the clock's extended hand?



And go where no one else follows.






Middle Road

Which hand? (Just think: You can't always be wrong.) Half the time it's something for you, if you can only guess.

And if you point correctly, there goes the surprise. (The continual shuffling behind the back, the new grin, the next in line of choices: it's the game, I suppose.) There it is - exposed.

Worst case you don't want it. You feel deceived by that other, the one unpicked, and let nothing drop into your hand.

But there could be a best case, now couldn't there?






Back Affronted

Could you imagine a trail of diamonds layered with fleece? Besides the greed, and the hankering for beauty, how vile can that road be? The root - as told - of all evil.

It's what shoots up, though, or through: All those telegrams rushing to remote regions.

That clattering of "all-is-not-so-well" arriving in fingertip or toe.

A wake-up call hungover and drenched with inertia: what once moved would rather still - the unattainability of perpetual motion be damned! - and what's at rest wants to remain deep asleep.

So much easier to grasp and cultivate perpetual stillness, anchor for a wide-traveling mind.



Or synonym for wit's end.