Through the warm and glowing tubes where? Back here, recessed? We're in the head. In back. Better. I feel it there unsorted and moving next to nothing, those boulders that will never move again: regret, limit, hazard of body where my river flows. It overwhelms the immovable. That's despair right there. I rise to the ghost love child. Despite having means we're alone on the road. They want neither of us. I slept through the clutter, the drama, the toothless residue on memory, back in the back trying to adjust to a single frequency that escapes me and my child, like the road home.
Let's not have nothing today when old marriages and new lovers are at their best on a gentle beach with shorebirds at our feet. Nothing is the easiest option. It flees from overlords and disloyalties. So, is it that bad in the next county? The Earth's crust slipped me there where the alfalfa is just as green. I think I'll prove there's not nothing today by noting things that were and still are: old magazine film clips, tools, and recipes kept in cigar boxes, poems, vows, even grudges to some degree that keep me from returning to hurt. I'll lose count with a walk down the beach. Such is the overflow exceeding the undertow of time.
And why is the finished phrase correct? Or almost always? Language is the map of culture and history so Time, speak up! My regular walk on the beach on the dust jacket photograph should have been a pencil sketch that I could revise easily. The sand got to it and the wind and dark brooders flocked in with their lone dogs on the strand. Beneath feeling well is persistent illness of heart and forgiveness lost in the suffering that overwhelms fine times and good luck. Ordinarily, today would not be now but it is. It would be the recollection of everything now could not withstand. Now is enough for today since I had not planned a visit, my car parked a little sideways at the curb. Let me fix that and I'll come in for a bit. If you're not too busy.
Unwind! Take charge from the nullifiers! Get up, sleepers, it's time to march! I'll throw away any beginning. It's like a film, toss the first ten pages and we're back on budget! Too much exposition - on with the chase! Noteworthy is the acceleration of talk concerning crow's feet and how it gives a smart bird a bad name. I always angle against petty justice so excuse my French but may the hurt step forward. See. Nobody. There will be no advocacy without constituency. March on past the cowards to live and let live. Tornado watch today. Such weather we've never seen here. Because we've never been here long. Unwind!
Lawrence Bridges’ poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums, Flip Days, and Brownwood. You can find him on IG: @larrybridges.