South of Lindsey, Away from the Fray

Gonnas do battle with oughtas aerial, angelic-prostrate, humble to the scene --

The scene! Oh the scene! The glorious fumble-bumble strung-out-hysterical --

While coulda lies stoned on my livingroom rug dreaming of a dubious Portland.

And the fickle wouldas take their coffee black in the evenings, sober but not too sober, high but not high enough.

Shouldas forgetful (or maybe it would be better to say

Devoted to forgetting; they make a sport of it)

Watch things play out on patios over pretty good beer, leery and hardfooted, perversions of wisdom,

Perverted to the bone,

Halfdreaming a ta-tap tapping, a wily and deranged beat, its hair a mess,

Its red eyes itching away a hangover, a snare-rim perfection they could never produce.

Lesser-known ogres riddle the breeze to pass while knights in pastel bottondowns stab wildly at redbrick crenellations.

The battlefield is a chaos pure and holy in its inanity.

Valkyries chatter over their prey, glorifying the valiant and leaving the unworthy to fight another day.

And a notsoclear-empty forty sits incongruous on my desk,

Only adds to the confusion, ought to be broken I think. I think

This is something akin to peace, not the thing itself but ironically

Not so dissimilar. Can we call it peace?

Can we bring ourselves to name a peace chaos and a chaos peace?

But this is the place of my contentment;

It need not be named I suppose. I suppose

This is a kind of peace, one of many,

A truncation of panics cooled by a joy real

And gorgeous.