The Doorknob

(a.k.a. Thoughts while En Route to Reading, PA)

This is me, playing. I told you I loved The Door, by E. B. White.

Isn’t it great how nonsense is deceptively similar to brilliance?

*****

The cause, she said, is never less than half of the intended effect, and the trick is not to lose your head. It’s so easy being someone else, but in the end there it is… cotton fluff, and a flagrant disregard for the sanctus acrimonious.

Driving down roads, wind in hair, foot hanging out the window, is something like what I did before, long ago, only now it’s gone. I can be okay with it as long as that puffy cloud stays right there but if the other comes I may detour and see what I can catch.

On the other hand, the cause of it all is still less than half.

Sometimes, she said, you just have to go for a while without sand, and then after all here it comes into that jar and there are even seashells and you can smell the salt.

They all talk about the cry of the gulls, and I wonder which it is, if it’s less or more than half, and whether you have anything left at the end.

More time is something that few people are given. Those who do lose the celebration, the clear mind and the storing away. Folds of cloth will do it sometimes, because of stretching it out and finding more, but after a while you’re done.

Cardboard is good too, but only if they have it in stock and it doesn’t hold everything, sometimes there are bits that break free unless you’re good at it. Red lights were made to stop at.

I wonder if I’ve ever been here before, and where I’ll be again, and why we have Only lanes everywhere, like we don’t want the mixing and have to know what the others are going to do. (It’s still not.)

You could go there if you wanted to, but someone would honk and the lines are not likely to be cleared away, although you can get good at ignoring the choking.

All the signs, they shout what you don’t want to know and in case you’re still in doubt, there’s another beside it. Here. Following someone isn’t easy, but they care a lot and show you how and give you tickets. It still isn’t sand, but more.

Part of her is genius, part poet, part lunatic and she is less than half. There’s a curve coming soon and she longs for it and tastes it in her mouth but endings come to the last page, not to spring. The curving goes on without end, but somewhere it all plays in daisies and afterward there will be no going back unless through runes.

With every bite you grow older, Alice.

If there’s anything I’ve learned about life, she said, it’s that the more you go on, the more the cause of all of it is there, and the complications are less or more, but you find don’t have to if you don’t want to. You always have a choice. Less is more in this game and when you win or lose it’s all about the way you go from there.

Clover winds smell sweet, but it’s the illusion of speed that will enable you to arrive.

I am a toy for the wind and not much else is going to keep turning sand into shells. There isn’t a lot, much more than half, and all roads lead to Caesar.

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Admin
11 years ago

Actually, I rather liked it.

Some of the words I didn’t understand, but I found the imagery quite effective. And, um, interesting rhythmic devices which seemed to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the humanity of the author’s soul, which contrives through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate whatever it was about.

Are you going to throw me off the ship?

Janelle Glick
11 years ago

I love it… Mostly because I can’t understand it in its particulars, but many lines feel familiar to me… Like “You could go there if you wanted to…although you can get good at ignoring the choking” and ” somewhere it all ends in daisies”‘

thank you for enriching my first day over due with my baby… Maybe she thinks she’s just in daisies?

Janelle

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