"Messages From My World"

Messages From My World

These bulletins, these updates in short bursts,
I am transmitting them all back.
You may receive them
through static on the radio
or as a ghost image on television,
superimposed over the news.
They may come to you like
dreams or visions or you may
hear voices like Joan of Arc.
Do not be alarmed. Instead,
just let me tell you that
I am of this world but
not in it. I was born into
the space between the spokes,
shot out into that small wedge of
nothing that is within the wheel,
caught, spinning and spinning,
banging back and forth but
not really part of the wheel.
Let me tell you that, today,
I am boiling even in this cold and
my soul sounds like a xylophone.
A man almost as old as my father
called me sir today and
years from now, I’ll remember
walking, nodding to passers by, hovering
in places I’d never been before
and never went back. On my death,
I’ll see my life as a long string of
unknown places, independent, alone.
So I continue outward, no luck, no logic.
The farther out I go, the less I remember
home—I look in my rear view mirror
and see it all shrinking into the distance.
The longer I’m gone, the more I find
there’s nowhere to go and nothing to know.
When I was born, I was shot from a sling and
I’ve been hurtling through the world ever since,
mapping out new territory, getting lost, then
finding my way again so I can
guide someone else when they’re lost.
I’m pedaling backward uphill and
someday I’ll return to the
starting point, I’ll come back home and
there’ll be cake and champagne for everyone.
Until then, stay tuned to the following messages…

©JEF 1998