when your mom told you bad luck results from going outside with wet knees,
you scrubbed skin to raw red medallions, never as dry as could be. now you
believe bad luck opportunes from clipped toenails after rain, from whistling
in bus stations, from writing poems on napkins at Yo La Tengo concerts.
things get ugly and out of hand, things get un and sur real in ways and weights
that defy the reasonable parts of your once sane, once calm brain pan (simmer).
you turn the flame low, and brush your finger clockwise over the top. you
don’t even question anymore – the debatably practical staves off the bad.
understand there’s always something to fear understand your way back out
Then when things get ugly and out of hand and un and sur,
you know it’s just a haphazard dry in the first steps out that makes you
suffer. just a too quick towel dash as the minutes clip by pppppppppppppppppppppppp
james (w) moore 