If you have to remove the oblongata,
if you really gotta, I told the doctor
just the other day, then do it, I know
you’re gonna do it, so do it already
if you gotta

Siamo d’accordo,
Godspeed, till nerve messages
pass this way again; the road least travelled

I vow: no poems left behind,
every dead synapse and lost memory
is a note-to-self to write an ode,
construct a new lyric, find another vein

O’ what a lode we tap in this web we weave-o,
out, out, you momentary flickers, shadows thrown by footlights

I remember when once we were coy,
rarely beguiled as such since

And to think I almost thought that some mention of me
would make sense here

I would throw it all away for the right sway
in time, long glides on spongy floors, all of our limbs forsaken
in little boxes of meter

And then what?
Work with me to isolate the desperation of that last question
And now what?

One cannot traipse where there is no floor,
or so the Buddha in me appears to want to emphasize,
despite being appropriately hoofed and choreographed

One can always mention the lack of any making
as a statement confirming some making, if only
by its meandering self-reference

Once I juggled a galaxy, the details way too small and infinitely numbered
to describe in the space we are allotted here

And so you must trust me – create a fair coin-toss
without ever having met me

What say you – heads or tails?

Chagall 2019