Wednesday, July 21, 2010

the drab half-through

You wait for the light to change, though the sky is all the same. A push of gray and blue, littered with the reverent sway and flutter of a sea of limb and leaf. A crow skates by missing pin feathers. If this slows it, it doesn't seem to show. Green light and you follow the painted purpose of the lane. Sometimes even you go with the flow.

Stand in line, wait your turn. This is the way of commerce, the place where they leave you once there is nothing left of you except these exchanges of tender. You wait to confess your wants and lacks, then pay to have them amended. You work the human side, smiling light and gentle. You give up some currency, you get the thing you came for, plus a few spat pleasantries as customs allow. You leave with an admonition of glad fortunes. Even the doors tell you what to do.

The mistake is tricks taken for craft. The mistake is thinking pieces make the puzzle. The will is always hard at work, shaking the cage and waving lost flags. The self is always mistaking justice for selfishness. It isn't that you were made this way-- the world grew up around you. You were built in history, and can only operate according to a few cherished mistakes. You were built before these ways and words, and can only see the world for what it should have been. It is over already, it ended long ago. You know this already, and have no reason to cede the day.

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