One
God First.
I awake. And the dreamsleep takes me. The star of the show is strutting her lines like some maniac trumpeter, machine-gun amphetamine whore. She’s got something to say, but I can’t make it out through the dusky din, cymbal calamity of my blurry morning eyes. It’ll keep. Hold it in for a while, honey, I say. I’m concerned now with this warm piano-board floor before me. When the sunlight comes in, it strikes it alight, ablaze, it lifts my feet from one heavenly stoop to another. Makes the day possible. Like a drunk in the dark bar. Wings of disquiet, Celtic woman alarm. Tom Skerritt and Michael Ironside are trying to decide this: if you had to go into combat, would you want him with you? This consternation governs my soul right now. And me, the third prong in the pitchfork neuroses to my arse, I’m not sure either. Mainly because I don’t know the battle itself all that well. What am I being asked to fight for? It’s a rabid stranger to me. Something I would never trust a ham sandwich to the care of, let alone my children. I think of a line from Calvary: “It’s just that you’ve got no integrity; it’s the worst thing I could say about anyone.” The cat wants to be fed. I’ll fire up the coffee machine first. Take a piss. Wonder where all my clean clothes have gone. Priorities. Last night, I wrote a line that could tie an entire poem together. Perhaps more. Maybe a lifetime. Days like these are what we are here for.