Joshua Keiter

Sometime during eternity 
This bookseller shows up 
Asking for the manuscript 
At the beginning of a great career 
And since he’s a hip bookseller 
He knows the literary reference 
Will not be lost on the hearers 
And he goes on to publish 
These square b/w pocket sized books 
The kind you might find at the candystore 
On the carousel next to the jujubes 
And they make their way around 
The world past the obscenity trials 
Landing even in some cadet class 
As in the famous photograph 
You might have seen making the rounds 
While he kept selling books 
And greeting young minds 
In the enchanted city by the sea 
Far from the rockaways of his heart 
The only island in his mind 
Speaking as to a dog in the street 
His own rambling coherent autobiography 
Over a steady stream of cafe late night 
Upright bass jazz of consciousness 
The love nut suffered somewhat 
Instructing the horseman to pass 
He must arise and go now 
To the isle of Manisfree 
Way out beyond the broken words 
And the usual unreliable sources
To the woods of Arcady

Unfathomable 
A number outnumbered by
A century’s worth 

Of avoidable 
Occurrences if we took 
Correct precautions 

Candles populate 
The staircase lighting the way 
Black hole in the heart 

Greets the empty chair 
Every morning without fail 
Just keep waking up 

I can’t go on I’ll go on

All day my brain has been 
Repeating short echoes 
Of the previous night’s dreams

Elusive imagistic entirely 
Unrelated to the content 
Before my eyes yet persistent 

As if attempting to reclaim 
The minutes left unslept 
Not only in the immediate cycle 

But stretching back to every 
Moment each dream played 
Between the brain’s synapses 

To make connections where 
There might have been dead air 
Emphasizing the fragments 

That keep experience whole 
To wake is to put sleep asleep 
Even dreams need to open 

Their eyes once in awhile to be 
Reminded they are the same stuff 
This concrete ephemeral membrane 

You blink and before it is gone

An understatement 
To say I did not realize 

How nostalgic I am 
For the before times 

And the after times 
Until seeing these names 

And faces and stories 
Across the screen 

Details of life described 
In media res which

It is simple to forget 
Is where we are 

Not just this open 
Ended parenthesis 

Facing the wrong way 
To close a paragraph 

We count lost moments 
As accomplishments too

Barely out of frame
We will be here again 

No matter where 
We find ourselves 

Telling stories with 
New tools broken in 

And ears swollen in 
Anticipation of the telling

Images flickering 
On the wall 
Of childhood’s cave 

Never before seen 
In context at the time 
Somehow still 

Artifactual captured 
In remastered sound 
And grainy vision 

Jump cuts and jokes 
Overlooked or outright 
Awkward laughter 

How many hours 
Spent remembering 
Half watching the same 

Losing all referent 
Just existing one moment 
And the next 

Three decades or more 
Static bouncing 
Off the satellites 

Sustaining circulation 
Delayed punchline
Wocka wocka wocka

Safe landing 
On another world 

In a past life 
There was water 

Now searching 
For some traces 

Persistent crater
Out of reach saved 

An echo in dust 
Instruments listen for 

Crouched in sound 
Thrumming silence 

Persevere knowing 
All effort is shadow 

Ghosts we embrace
Arms outstretched

It is still a shock 
To see daylight streaming through 
Windows glazed with haze 

Not that the clouds broke 
Though potentiality 
As towers implode 

Build a legacy
Live your life in such a way 
That news of your death

Does not spark outbreak
Of widespread unbridled joy—
Achievable goal

Don’t mix ashes with water

Soon it will have been 
A year since the last normal 
Thing we did happened 

So then from now on 
Everything we do will be 
The second go round 

It might as well be 
Deja vu from here on out 
Though things may have changed 

We have not let go 
Of future milestones delayed 
By the principle 

Of the not as yet 
That we seem to live by now 
The earth is frozen 

Even in the parts 
That do not heat their houses 
The unexpected 

Will keep turning up 
And the numbers we tally 
Will move up or down 

Despite or because 
Of the effort put into 
Making tomorrow 

Feel less like it did 
When we were expecting it 
All of a sudden 

To change back to what we knew

A process of discovering 
At the end of the rope 
Is a candle burning 
That as far as you remember 
Was also already burning
At the start of the rope
Seeming to shorten 
The length of the rope
As you were traveling it 
Suspended in emptiness 
That might go on forever 
Except you cannot remember 
How you started on the rope 
Or what made you think 
It was a good idea to travel 
The entire length of spacetime 
On such a fragile ephemerality 
That seemed to lead one way 
When all the time you knew 
You could travel in all directions 
And the rope would lead you home 
Even as it resembled nothing less 
Than the combustible embers 
That sparked you into being 
A candle burning at both ends
This is the short and the long

So many years 
Blent together 
Indistinguishable 
One to another 

Hardly given 
A second thought 
From day to day 
Lives inauspicious 

The present spent 
Recollected reckoning 
How to wake up 
Years still blinking 

Eyes closed in spite 
Of the weather 
Better to open 
Knowing you are there