nytomboi's blog: "what i do..."

Cleanin the junk drawer... My mind is a jumbled mess of pencil nubs, a galaxy of knotted rubber bands, dispensers stuck without tape, happy meal artifacts, screws and bolts from things that manage to stay whole. I can’t concentrate. Sometimes I find pleasure peeling wallpaper, strips of vines and sexual flowers. Other times I make lists of things that need fixing. Or I drink. Tonight, with not enough to get half drunk, I stare too long at a chunky wooden puzzle on the table. A six piece circus scene with seal and tiger, elephant and clowns. The ringmaster is the one I become. I train squirrels that cuss me from a perch of oak, full of vim. We travel through the south and book state fairs. The Amazing Unicycle Squirrels. I slip them licks of mixed nut paste laced with a gentle sedative. I wear them like a gray fur coat and pass a rusty tin for tips. I shut the drawer. Truth is, I’m avoiding the news again. I check the glass to see if it’s still empty. It is. Where are you? Hiding in the utter weariness of life. The night is full of toy pianos. I stretch my fingers and bang away.

Maybe you don't read poetry. Maybe this clear singing on paper is a sound you have heard only dimly, if ever, muffled in the dull thuds of rhythm, singsonged into a rhyming trance. But my songs are more pennywhistle than opera, more drum than symphony. And if you've ever breathed in the gray mist of a wet November and thought it a fine day, if you've ever wondered what the mice must think, or dreamt of speeches from the dead, if you would swear by all things holy that stones hum to themselves on hot, still days, if beauty to you is the cracked calluses of gnarled hands and love, the sweetness of silence, then you already know what I do.