Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving,
so, tonight I’m drinking Wild Turkey
in the minutes before I hope the world explodes
like a pheonix of sound
born from the ashes in this air.

All this smoke’s been filtered
through humanity’s lungs and desires for clarity. All this
smoke’s been waiting since the start of time
to ride the currents of this cafe’s breathing.
All this smoke’s becoming more than the invisible
patterns of turbulence churning away
from Kawasaki’s tenor.

I am the sort of monster that imagines
a single particle of this smoke
through its formless and formed and formless play,
all the ways it finds for being. I imagine
its undying float through infinite lies
and the other words I love to call towards it,
as though the shapes of my lips
might make me love it more than absolutely.
I am the sort of pleased beast that pictures
a crystal of smoke tearing off from an embering leaf
grown in some sun-soaked landscape
and watches that molecule of exhaustion rise
through light and contrast into arabesques of visible language.

We must know the desert Arabs loved to light fires
and contemplate the cursive. The Sanskrit calligraphers
had rites for inching their lips close enough to flames
to burn their quick kisses into acrid flashes of peeling chap,
watching how briefly they would ignite
and become evident as line against ceilings of carpet.

Yes, I am the sort that is willing to concentrate
deeply enough to follow, fathom and chart
a single bit of smoke’s progression through to its rest
as residue in my hair.

Pungent spike of tobacco, here is where you have become.
You rode the riot of sound tonight and have sewn yourself
into my intimacy. This is not your end, nor mine.
This is merely our bubble-burst of meeting.
Next time it may be me who drifts past your eyes
while you stir a rock of ice floating in Thanksgiving.
And it may be you who fills a stolen page with scrawl.



by jerry gordon
11.27.08
common cafe, nakazaki-cho, osaka