Abstract Building (hands)

And deep within it all the embryonic “wanderer of the ways of all the world” ~ Odes + Days VII Bruce Beaver

What does it matter anyway, you said, running your hand along the edge of the broken piano. I heard you say it clearly though your voice was muffled by the motor of a passing car. You turned then, with this far off distant lost somewhere look in your eyes, and said it fresh. This time I didn’t hear you only saw your mouth shape the words falling as though broken worms onto the carpet. Our days together stretched out in the hallways of a thousand hotels, became desperate and wet like the hand of a frightened child.

The smiling man on the tv set pointed at yet another large chart of statistics*. Under what illusion or metaphor could an author construct such an intricate scene. After all the man with the odd eyeball on the staircase on the way up laughed from behind him again. He would figure out perhaps, in some late night abstract theses the part that cats play on the trellis. But now for sure the unseen builders will distract him from the game. He will stumble, the ball will fall, but it is only fear that stalks him. We all have the technology, access to the symbols the perfume to make it pretty, the gloss to make it sell. Only a few in the herd hear the word, a particular sleight of syllable. And supposing that their greatest strength was in the centre of the land, therefore we marched forth, giving them no time to assemble themselves.

Crowds howled and wagged fingers at them.

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* Ha – he said, chin in hand on this, like any other morning, poring over the papers. I always said one day they would use the law of averages to turn us into slaves. And, as per usual, it’s not an easy thing to follow his argument, protracted as it is from a slab of research as thick as any thesis. But I kind of listen, like I believe him, as foolish as it sounds.

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