Full Circle (A rumination in 3 strokes)
Full Circle
(A rumination in 3 strokes)
Stroke the First – Dante’s Laugh
Another cycle eats its tail
While you’ve killed time
Hacking through a Frisco fog
And now you’re hit
Like a mole in headlights
Squinting
At the fact
A circle is endless
Welcome to Limbo
That flag’s still out there
Snapping, flapping
And the crowd’s sweaty
Joke’s on you
Dante chuckles
As you strap on your spikes
Man – Don’t you know?
Gotta be hip
To run with the damned.
Stroke the Second –Odyssean Oddity
In overdrive
Wheels greased
You’re GORGED
On road
But that ribbon is still stretched to the horizon
A long licorice lane
Tugged tenuous to…where?
Dream of flight
(if you please)
Call it a runway
Call you a cab
They’re just
Distorted digressions
By a lightheaded cyclist
Sailing through a sapped psyche
So split-S
And barrel roll
Down the desolate wind tunnel
Of the vortex of your cortex
You’ll soon discover
A midget aviator can still get wind-sheared
Fast as you can shout mayday.
When the whitecoats eavesdrop
On your black box
They’ll start
To find
You never left the ground.
Stroke the Third – This one’s for you
So—
Thought you’d spend Eternity
(Well, maybe just a slice, thanks)
In a beer ad
Grabbing gusto
Well –
You sucked
Untold sudsy shadows down
Got your PR buzz
Time to check your itinerary
When you do
You’ll spot your spot
On a Mobius strip
Crazy coordinates on a hellish helix
With nowhere to go
And no way home
Not to worry
Once more around and
Once you grab that brass ring
You will realize
It’s mostly air.
— Zumwalt (D.C. ca. 1982)