prison song 06

prison song 06
by Joe Blades © 2006

a leather clay slab-built tray awaits
after ursula gives it the slip
and the chartruse slip dries
i will stamp symbolic drawings
made words not cuniform in the clay
lazy letters twist sideways
like many a rancher brand
spacing uneven yet interesting
this this old manual typewriter
with its compact carriage and
self-reversing black & red ribbon

(like the reversing falls downriver
where the incoming tide pushes
back and rises from it low)

back and forth—unless i were
to stare at the ribbon and not
the words struck from it
wouldn’t know whether it reels
left to right or right to left
as i lever lift the paper to receive
each new line of mundane words

the clay tablet slower
to compose words upon—
character by character face up
to be seen and aligned vertically
rotated 180 degrees to impress
for two and one half hours
until the poem is dinosaur
tracks in river mud marked
and set aside to dry slowly

after midnight thunder and light
show and shower till the bars
last called and ejected spent
customers like chicken wings
with the meat stripped off
small bones piled on the side
of the takeout plate sidewalk

after that and waking refreshed
energised a few hours later
steamed-up humidity is back
with cumulus clouds building
in fierce sun blue sky afternoon
during a concert of fiddle and bodran
buozouki djembee and keyboard
on pillared guardhouse porch

T-shirt: Dragon's Breath Kingston Brewing Company
loc: Soldrs Bk munition casemate
temp: 26 C (feeling like 35 C)
sound: The Cure, various