22—An East German Forest Story
(After Elke Erb)

Perhaps this is a bend, a small death that
I will navigate w/o difficulty & will
succeed
in the end deliver my glorious stain.
It has echoes of intense depression as if
in these two halves of me each want to split
this carcass apart.  It is the near suicidal agony this
text should relate.

Which way to go? Which fork? Which road? Each question
seems pitiable & intense. Falling failing
to understand the road itself in preoccupation w/ MOVE.
Reject shamanic sensibility or an
interpretation Grandma would lend or someone who's
since shed the trappings of machine &
become aware of their own natural
shape & rigour, their own complex cosmology
it is stardust that these molecules consist of, someone who
stands, head-string apparent, an earth flow in
there palpable, coursing, a direct tap into divine
like the dual lightening bolts Saturday over Lake Michigan.
A pause.                                Free time.                                 The
red   light   of   dead   air   goes   off   &   like   a   frightened
deer shot through the forest, nervous system
which is pure panic, a learned reaction
has stript ability to respond, enjoy the pause, purpose
kept from the little boy the bundle of reactions turned into
the mindless spin & meander of one temporarily lost in the
forest.

8.22.01
3451 Ozanam, Chicago
w/ line from Elke Erb's Text and Commentary
Poems for the Millennium 2,
pg 644