Kit Kelen #1138 - I hid myself in the work

1138

I hid myself in the work

(each day’s toil sequel to a last)

like a dream I pulled up over my head

so that, invisible, alone

I beavered on

I nutted out

it was my personal best, this dark

and under Aphrodite’s nighty

we sang up a storm

I worried the thing like a bone

no one saw

choir took me

it was heavenly

but the angels do harp on

they were counting till doomsday

and still the cameo blink

very Hitchcock

headfirst

I grew a long white beard for the job

and wouldn’t be discovered

was it the right thing

or you tell me?

I was under the spell

and played the symbols

for a grief of light

snake and saws

frond, fire

I was all rabbit ears for ether

you were laying low

we were well in the ink of then

must bring us up to now

all together

so be my baby metonym

lie beside me here

curtain the tabernacle too

carry it across

nap and back at it

with a ladder twist

I wore the gravity bonnet

I had the straw to catch

gathered myself up close for a honing

now I rise at a certain temperature 

though often unleavened yet

stretch, shine

no one would know

mild mannered by day

when the drugs are gone

here’s to it still then yet

up atom and fly right

to each bird its bower

then when the mind is hive abuzz

and bee loud

(that’s another poem)

I’ll fall off the map

balancing an image in the cup

a carnival event

lightning has me hell and leather

there, back again, imperial

to bravely pack up tent and go

split the infinitive

make definitive

a mark like birth

more painful

more slow

I buried myself

in the breath of the word

and the word was mine

for just then

was it good?

went on

it was lunchtime

and not yet a legend

I threw a few more words at the thing

thing lapped it up

the machine went down

I lost the work I was buried in

I went down on the machine

sparks flew and there was gargling

there might have been an age

of mechanical reproduction

but no such thing was seen

fish in a barrel

the whole thing’s rude

buried such thoughts in a nice thick skin

a word in a line in a page till the book

set about to collocate

and play the paradigm

pressed save so I was outa there

irony’s edifice so I admired

and turned out for a mirror

I was a talent for underwriting

no print smaller than mine

                              and crafty

come with a corporate attitude

no one will notice

a dime in the dozen

give or take penny

pound the pavement

setting it down

paranomastic

(everybody gets a percentage)

under an arrow flung

line dotted

cloud, tree, stream, sky

thrown familiarly to words

now spastic

never twice the same

I wept for the wit and the wonder of me

(as Dickens did with his best ends

because they lived for him)

and so long lives

this happy glorious

the word made alien

so mine

lapsed from was to wannabe

here

and so

there there

one thing has led to another

and now

in smaller and smaller writing

always less of a page

sand, clay or loam?

was this a place?

is anywhere?

I did it all for the book

on bicycle

by ear

I hid myself in the paint

and wished a way

from there until

I had to call this home