Birthdays and Ordinary Ones

(July/Aug. 2011)

I left my favorite song playing in the car when I left. 

Mistake?

The time has come for the dancing girls to begin their fasting.  Here, things take too long to happen.

God: a weary obstacle.

The time has come for the drinking boys to begin.

Here, things take too long to happen.  I close my curtains and cook a heavy lunch.  The gardener outside my window, a disappearing image.  I boil more coffee for breakfast.

London burns and Libya burns and Egypt is thrown behind bars.   And the same old man wakes up in the morning like nothing ever happens and wears a suit and tie.  The same suit and tie.  The same morning.  His beaten wife asleep in the next room. 

Mistake?

Jesus was thirty three when everything began.  And the bleeding continues since then. 

Sometimes, she said to me, you find yourself married to the same man you left behind, in the car where your favorite song was playing.  All over again.

The two have nothing to do with each other, except the rising between their legs. Always the rising.

And the beaten wife gives birth to children.

Eventually the children, no longer children.  Some of them have some of their own.  Always the rising between their legs.

The man gets up and wears his suit and tie. A country on his mind. 

Sometimes a city.

And I leave

the song playing in the car.  No children to claim.

None to ruin.