The Ballad of the Wandering Consciousness

I tried to still myself to write it
but my peripatetic heart,
that little rodent,
was scrabbling for grain. For gain.
I tried to empty myself of ambition,
but the TV wanted to
talk to me, man to man.
I called myself on the extension. I
just need a little time,
I whined. Yep, I hammered
back, a little time is all you have.
Pilgrim, I am determined to get it all
down, the ballad of
our times, how they collide
and hustle, how they
collude and infract.
My hand stops above the page. A drop
of ink falls. It is a beginning
of sorts, the best we may get here in
Notown, where they
tell you to eat all correspondence, to
erase words as quickly as
they are created. Language
is a nightbloom. It is what I will use.
It gathers in me like a bubon.   

                                                                                                � Corey Mesler

Loch Raven Review Spring 2006 — Vol. 2, No. 1
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