The day . . . overcast and strangely industrial . . .
armpit saddlebags
with full-blown cholesterophobia . . .
tipping the go-between to encapsulate time and attendance . . .
rehearsing the commonplace
three standard deviations above the mean . . .
Have I been duped into thinking there will be another? . . .
All this posthumous posturing, pshaw . . .
Back then, I suppose it mattered . . .
But now with deadbeats in ascendance, forget it . . .
An octopus-in-training inking nonsense syllables
itching with false promises . . . Instagrammed with time-outs . . .
insinuating itself into the best of times
when no one is looking . . .
How so, you ask? . . .
I am filled with the music of DakhaBrakha
a Ukrainian group I first heard on an NPR Tiny Desk Concert . . .
The preferred costume of flâneurs? . . .
Flannel shirts of course flapping on clotheslines . . .
Could be the beginning of a novella . . .
where readers cut to the chase . . . and regret doing so . . .
Reading between the lines . . . you backstroke beyond the breakers
as if in a scene from Beneath the 12-Mile Reef . . .
CinemaScoped and soundtracked with a little help from Terry Riley's In C . . .
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the last line . . .
the one-trick pony has vanished . . .
with just enough time on the clock for some to call it a miracle . . .
