reoutcarnation

You get a feel for the wheel, if only the repetition of the spin, and the counting of the spokes. You’re never still but the sameness becomes the suchness. You run out of words because they’re never quite there and they’re never quite enough. It’s a shrug, it’s a sigh, it’s rain from a clear blue sky. Pennies from heaven pounding in the nails, death the great croupier.

We are born into this world, we pass into the next, at least according to popular slogans and pamphlets. We plod along amongst the many peoples and the hosts, late comers to the continuity, killers and conquerors and halfwit clowns. We name our progeny for gods and gurus and culture heroes in hopes of ascendancy or extinction, hapless in our hubris. Blow out the candles, cut the cake, let the good times roll and do it again the next turn around the sun.

I can’t count the number, I don’t count in the reckoning, I just keep the cascade going. Busy hands both too clumsy and too clever, leaving the devil to their own devices, only sure of the next catch and toss. I limp along, wounds weeping through their pitiful prophylaxis, dead blood soaked sock and shoe the measure of every step. Father of abortion and miscarriage, I have no offspring to fall short of the arc of my own aspirations, no sequels to love and worry after. All the stories disappoint equal to their source, the heritable war come home to my door, lies all that’s left to lean on.