Sweat

The long long day worries me like a bone. All the trouble I put away last night is up with the dawn. Like children on Saturday morning, it’s watching the cartoon of my life, stomping about the house, laughing. I find my kindness in a cip of hot copffee and get started with the Hammer of Salvation and start working that trouble again. I’m trying to make something useful.

Up comes the hammer, suspended in space-time, as I take aim on the thing darting about. It seems like I hold it there for a year Face beading up. Muscles quivering. Panting. It always starts this way with me spending everything trying to be accurate and economical.

Down I swing with my hammer. A mighty blow.

I strike.

and miss.

So early my patience is spent.

Encyclopedia

When I need to know what brown is, I ask the Evangelist, and he turns the pages of authorized orthodoxy, to read to me the conditions of my slavery.

When I need to know what violet is, I ask the Scientist and he gives me homework from the pages of allowed dogma, and I do my paper on the necessity of my bondage, with at least 5 sources, heavily cited endnotes.

When I want to know what red is, I ask the Politician and he quotes the books of the law, laid down before the foundations of the world, declaring upon me my whore birthright. Then he gives me what I deserve, and after I wipe my mouth and curl up in a ball and weep, he says he feels my pain and kisses my baby.

I want to go to Beulah Land.

I want to go to the Forest of Blank Pages.

I can write my own story there. I can name my own colors there, thick and wide, full of folio upon folio of the truth that fell upon my senses. Fell upon my senses when we were alone, unbridled, and pure.