Momentarily Between Worlds

By a corrugated town, the Mexican witch doctor
rascals up the foam that's drawn from smoke:

"In the North magnetic cities
where the brainwaves make things move
one must stay always frenetic
to maneuver round the rooms of brick
dismantled and resumed - where skeletons
have turned to history books
and then to Peruvian menus.

"How much better to imagine owls
in the layers of the sunset
with calm tones when the spring moon shivers
say it's just the way things are.

"The skateboard princes roll the tar
by mangy vine and stoop-stones of dragons and lions;
so quick do things turn stale there,
how easily dilapidated,
how soon the children try to sound like birds.

"Here the evening sun is unadorned
and virgin truth surrounds us like a song,
and we can stare and stare and never get
one hemi-quaver closer. The fire melts
the keening mind, til the wind speaks in our voice...

"Not like those blue horizons
where sailheads bob like trees
shuddering while minds like crows
behind them strive to stay hidden.
The secret there's in knowing
the who, what, where and when,
and remembering that all such facts
resolve to contradiction.

"Here, all mysteries must stay, we can't retain
even an ink stain of this moment
and we wouldn't think to argue
with the birds or with the stars.
The valley floor can only be
imagined...

"No pivot point
for freedom's painful upward roar."