Chokepoint

1. Prologue: Where Were You?
Where were you?
Where were you the day that you were born? the day your body was born?
Where were you the day that your frame took its first form? Where had you been?
Where had you been before the rest of you arrived? Where had you been before?
Where were you coming from?
riding around and pulling random parts out of the ground? What was the day you finally arrived?
when you came tumbling down?  When did you realize you had arrived? Words started falling awkwardly around.
It was the day that the sun came showering down. Were you digging in the dirt looking for answers? Were you gathering speed and gathering a storm? Were you peeling back the bark?
scavenging the grubs that were barking at you? Were you stepping lightly?
stone to stone? to tip to toe?
What was the day that you came and started building a palace? hanging in the garden?
in a hanging garden?
It was the day that the sun came showering down.
One minute you think you know.
The next minute, before it you know, there you go.
I’d give way more than a dime for more than just a little more time. Every date is flying blind straight in the face of what is kind.
Whether fly or rock, there is always one more. And one more sin.
The next thing you know there’s no chance to begin.
I remember everything the moment that it is happening.
If I could I’d use my teeth to bend time like I bent that dime. I don’t want to get high, but I do what to get higher.
You don’t have to be good, just appear to be winning.
I don’t have to get real high, but I should get a bit higher. You don’t need to be right if you shout just a bit louder.
2. Sunny Day
Broke out into the yard, in a little corner of the galaxy, but you couldn’t see far into the future.

Getting started to build up a little model of a fantasy. You don’t need to see much to get the picture.
Ran away from the night, looked down at the sky, it turned its back on me.
Turning back to the job: house in the treetops.
There’s a trip waiting to be done to the dark side of the sun. No plans were made to stray from a very milky way.
I can’t leave. Neither can I stay.
Everything’s fun, funny and fun on a sunny day.
A little bird is coming from eight minutes away, you to evapora…
Not a care in heaven or on the earth, doodoodoo… Trouble’s coming sideways broad and blind.
Feel a little bit tense.
Sitting on the fence ‘twixed whither and ‘tween hence. Can’t be trying to run from such a sunny ray gun.
Waiving au revoir and getting lit up by a big-g-g-gas  star.
Daedalus sent Icarus to Helios to see what was up with all the heat that beat down on the three.
Now back to knuckle down and crack down on every little fright, crack up at the crack of dawn, it’s quite a frightful sight.
But this is what I came to see: a little trip to paradise that starts out up this tree. It won’t be long ‘til I am long gone.
3. Limbylimb
Everybody wants to climb just a little higher and then a little bit higher and then a little bit higher. Everybody wants to get just a little bit farther and then a little bit farther from the garden, from the ground.
Everybody wants to get just a little bit closer, just ten feet closer to the next solar system. Everybody wants to make it seem just a little bit better than the way it really is which is dead and deader.
Go on, brother, knock yourself out pulling yourself up to the top of the heap. Take every limb by the hand over hand over hand over fist.
Everybody wants to not sink a little bit lower, not a little bit deeper, get a little bit slower. And nobody wants to get a little bit dimmer, even a little less lighter, to be less of a fighter. Come on, now, shrink the room between you and the moon.
Lower the leaves to the level that crosses your eyes.
If you take just a minutes and you try to remember what the last thing was before your trip into the timber,
Everybody wants to think that the reason they’re higher is the steps they took to the top. Who doesn’t want to be up in a house in the sky, after all?
When you hang your head by the neck and you pull your head up by the strap of your boot.
Head up to thinner air which is where there is less resistance to the notions that were languishing in high grade gravity.
Everybody wants to get things to look somewhat shiny, though they might be dull they’ll look a little shinier.
Everybody wants to go where the breathing is easy and the weather is pleasy and the conversations breezy.
Everybody wants to step on top of one or the other of one and another, give each other a smother. Everybody wants to push the needle a little bit over to the right into the red, into the arm through the eye of the camel in your head.
Step on anybody or anything blocking the way.
You can be the only one who has got something to say, every day.
Everybody wants to make things a little bit straighter and a little bit smoother and a little bit softer. Everybody wants to be the last thing you remember when you’re turning the corner at the top.
Who doesn’t want to go party with stars in the sty of a sky, after all? Come on everybody; let’s trip to the top of the heap where it is steep.
Head up to thinner air where there is no resistance, where those thoughts can disappear, never to be heard from again.
Everybody wants. Nobody wants not.
4. Treehouse
Choose a color. Temperature: cool. Pick a flavor. Take a number.
Screw it all together now. Everyone loves a tower.
Swing a saw, draw a hammer, tie a tight tight line.
Measure once, cut twice, spin a nail, drive a pile, wrench a chisel by the tail. Do the numbers, orbit the spot, shifting the shape or thickening the plot.
Turn a nail, pound a screw, swing a pick and cry a hue.
Choose a length, height or thickness, and a favored mode of sickness.
Building closets to keep our secrets in, shades exposed to shadows in the darker rooms. Bricking in the dust of bluish master plans, winding timbers rust and twist just high enough. Grab a genus, pick a race, class or caste. And a speed: maybe haste.
Pick a style: in or out. Choose a letter of the law.
And a tense: maybe “see,” maybe “saw.”
Hitch a knot, bust a mutton, frame a gibbet, thread a thickening plot. Dream box country spaceship palace, a secret fortress that’s a sacred trap. No gorillas are allowed inside.
Big gorillas: from them one should hide.
Pinch a winch and hob a knob, hoist a joist in April. Craft a testimonial.
Plan your own memorial, form your testimony, trophy monumental, they’ll check the record dental. No one can shimmy up the social tree better than a chimpanzee.
Everyone doesn’t want to hang way out.
Things are a little hipper a little higher up, a little deeper in the canopy, up with a bug and a flea and a nervous tick.
No going down.
The only way off is up. Scatter away.
Babble it on. Chop it up.
Battles are the belfry furniture.
Fix the size, shift a shape, build your box, sand the corners, seal up the seams, tie up loose ends,
sink up into your sunken sanctuary.

5. The Bird and the Boy
What might the one say to the other?
“Why don’t you fly away with me? Why don’t you find a way? grind away with me?” How may the other then reply?
“I don’t want to get too carried away, ferried away, with and scaried away by you.”
To this the one could then inquire,
“When can you steal away with me? Don’t ennui away, sigh away, or sign away another day when you can while away with me.”
How might the other then respond?
“Canyounotshowmehowtoflutterabout?ramblearound?andlandonhigherground?”
To this the one would then rejoin,
“There’s no getting around, only getting away. You’ll find never a nest to brood in here.” After thinking about it the other would declare,
“Let’s not do the dance that leaves me here, sitting there, just to wait and stare.”

6. A Rope
Fear.A line. A signal. Gravity.
A cord to rip for safety. Umbilicus.
The sound of a voice. A groaning anchor.
A line of life for walking deep in space, in water. There are many ways to be tethered.
We try to fly, to come unfettered, yet we remain quite unfeathered. Gather your things, as you swing put some heart in those strings.
Raveling, unraveling, weave away.
Tug, suspend, building ends, upend the end. Twist and wind up your mind.
Tenses, senses spin, twirl,wind. Twist, wound, leave wound in the wind. Tangle twine, tie a line.
Straddle fences.
Loosen your things because they cling and put some heart in those strings. Wrap and coil, tension roil, lasso and so.
Knotted line, unread sign, tingling, dangling. Tug of war, tight of rope but slight of trope. String it out and up, restraining order.
String it along in your heart and use a slight ritard. Spinning your tail, sing a song that is full of stringy things. Scatter your songs, what they bring is a life on the wing. Hanging out and freely swinging. Swingalingding.
Not like Judas, not like John Brown, not like Saddam. Time is right and time is tight, the rhyme is trite.
Torque and tune, unlucky plectrum getting plucky. Unwire your mind to remain staying with your kind.
Cinching up the final cincture, robed in a rope, flying ‘round the holy maypole, no rope-a-dope.
Come to rest, you come to dangle at no angle.
Finish with a wrangle, free of any tangle.
Unloosen your things because they cling and put some heart in those strings. Loosen your grip.
Lighten up.
Let your dark thoughts slip.
Cranking on a knot of fiber, poor baby bird.  Drooping, swaying, trailing, flailing, lost the last word.
Choking, chirping, summit lurching, whims in decay, ever resting, ceasing nesting, losing your way.
7. Guttural Glottal Utterance
Choke up.
What’s the point of an easy breathing passage as you wonder away? Stop gap, bottle neck.
With the spinning and the twining and the wheezing and the whining. Choke down and anoint, you’re the miller’s stone around your own neck. Squeeze through the hourglass, creeping desperation’s finishing pass.
Guttural. Glottal. Guttural. Utterances.
Give yourself a rest, let the belt tighten around your tightening chest. Choke up, funnel down, wringing and writhing wretchedly.
Logs are jammed in your neck of the woods. Your breath will hold itself.
Hold it down, poke around, racing neck and neck. Guttural. Glottal. Guttural. Utterances. Guttural.
8. Sometimes Something
Hold me 'til I’m gone.
Sometimes something sweet and simple goes way, way wrong. So it seems the world is finished hearing this young song.
Thought it’s true: the scene was acted poorly all along. 'Til I’ve drawn the final reward, hold me.
'Til there is someone around, hold on fast to me.
‘Til I’m resting quietly by, wrap yourself tight around all the parts that could lead to another breath. Sometimes some things are as simple as they appear.
Just a-sittin’ and a-swingin’ and a-swayin’, soothseein’ and a-sayin’, wheezing a little tune, looking at things, engaged  in meditation in all the things I never noticed before.
Never noticed the spider deciding where heaven was. Never saw that the snake was appealing to everyone. Never noticed the kite that flew into neon infamy.
A-chewin’ the gnarly bark and pecking the wood in the canopy, and the buzzing, the beetles, the weevils, the hive-y bees.
Many a millipede marching and trampling and stepping smartly along.
Just a-twichin’ and a-kickin’, noticing that there is a baby bug walking on me.
We’re having quite a time, just the two of us, me and the apple tree.

Sipping and sucking the sap of a jungle gymnasium. Clutching and licking a toad, chasing fantasium.

The click of the squirrel and the hiss of the monkey appeal to me. The mites and the grubs and the worms make a meal of me.

Now here’s a little bird for me to speedily spirit away with. Don’t try to unspin a cocoon or you’ll tear it up.

9. Panic Bar
Saddle up a chair and sidle on up, order up a drink at the panic bar. Pulling out all the stops to cut him down, something’s ripe a little early.
She is going all in, going all out of her mind, pulling out all the hair that she could use to let him gently down to earth.
Stay there hanging on the line a little while, you look a little bored, you could use a lot of style. She is throwing him an adrena-line.
He cannot be bothered to be caught up in the excitement, the evolving, emerging, creeping panic of the hour.
She is flipping switches faster than the color of her hair goes draining from her face. Using every trick in her magic sack, pulling every string, trying to bring him back.
Sweating cold, casting spells, heart is off to the races. Fuse is lit for blowing up in the panic spaces.
Chest pounding, no punch pulling, plugging every leak and pulling every plug in sight.
Set that blue-gray shock ablaze and dig a tunnel through the roof and down the throat to see what’s left, see what’s left of the deft and the smooth and the silver tonguing groove of joy.
Nothing’s right, not the still life study, not the pulse of clever or of coy.
Spinning out, sweat and swear, curse and dare, finding tingled spines and burning hair in there. Sorcerate and incantize, cauterize with hot alarms and freakish charms.
Persuade the world to set itself aright.
Plead with every tweeting bird and slugging bug that passes by to ride the wave of panic raising blisters on the hearts of things.
A fight is breaking out at the panic bark, pump a lot of air into anywhere.
10. Wake Up, Baby
Wake up, baby, come on down. Mama’s gonna bring you round. Won’t you stand down?
Won’t you stir? answer with a little whisper? Tiptoe reaching way up high.
Pick the apple from the house built from the log in my eye.
Which would be the rescue true: falling out or falling into the blue? Oh, what can be done to conjure you?
Oh, sweet darling breathe a perfume of the rot that this uncut cord is not. Inspirate and expiration.
Let  us  have  a séance.     Clear the clutter clean away.
Breathe a little fragrance, drinking in a crystalline ballet. It’s true, there is not another side.
Channel, lock and launch your voyage.
Ease up here with me, well past the hanging tree. Ease up here with me, ease slightly out of reach. ‘E’s way up here with me.
Look around.
You can see ‘e’s come a long, long way to get to heaven’s tree. He’s back home, back to decomposing naturally.
He’s wafting as he reads decaying poetry,
11. Bonesy
…and looking ‘round for some fun, where did she go? Went to get her party dress ready for the show.
Sheopenedupthesecretdoorandlookingallaround,
saw him hanging in there making not a single sound.
Hewashanginginthecloset,alldressedinatie,
sized him up and noticed he was very, very dry.
She cut him down from the tree and what did she discover?
It wasn’t so bad with a doornail-dead  lover.
Wiggle,youngWillie,spinoverinandout,
hunker down and grit your teeth, try not to pout.
Swing,sweetSally,keepitonyourtoes,
swagger with a secret that everybody knows.
Dance, brittle Betty, step on all the stones.   Boogie with your baby, go clogging with his clones.
Digyoudirtydog,nowdigforyourdinner,
these lonely old bones aren’t getting any thinner.
Shetookhimdownoffthehangerandlaidhimonthefloor,
fixed him up for supper at an hour after four.
Shefoundhisbonesinaboxallheavywithhisdust,
she blew ‘em off and shined ‘em with a certain satin luster.
Shetookthebitsandpiecesandput‘eminhermouth,
swished ‘em round and round until they came out down south.
Shesaddledupherspinyspurs,jammedhiminhisshins,
she rode him hard and had him doing fancy flips and spiffy spins.
Shimmy, slim Jimmy, shuffle with your feet,
jam ‘til the morning, spreading somethingsweet.
Shuffle‘cross,upanddown,moveyourfancyfeet,
in and out on the town bang a boulder beat.
Bounce, baby Billy, pop a little corn,
shake yourself silly, toot your hairy horn.
Rocksinherpocket,mixed‘emwiththebones,
shook out a hippy tune with pretty skele-tones.
Sheputhisbonesinabarrelandtookhimforaride,
home to meet the folks, they wouldn’t let him inside.
Shefellinlovewithherboywhojustabagofbones,
she said she’d love him to the end of all the sticks and all the stones.
She was jealous of his stories, jealous of his toys,
regretted his attention on the other boney boys.
She dug him up for the wedding, it was more than she should carry,
foundapriestinthetrash,buttheywere more than he couldmarry.
Shehadaghostforasuitor,agoblinforadate,
put a mega big deposit on the iffiest of mates.     
Losthermindinaminute,lostherwayinthenight,
‘cuz he was out of body, out of touch and out of sight.
Getscaredskinny,giveyourselfacrack,
just another one of many off the skeleton stack.
Prayprettybaby,giveitallyougot,
pray for rain in the desert, it’s coming or it’s not.
Theypaidnoattentiontowhatanybodysaid,
it was an everyday affair between the living and the dead.
12. Lonely Traveler
Lonely traveler.   No turning around.
Thread unraveler, leaving no trail.
Leaveatail,dissipate,sailinspace,driftandfade,
float away, let it go, free of place, chug and roll, there’s no stopping it now.
Mystery solved.
He’s such a light sleeper, he’s an off drifter, and I’m a flame keeper. Sleeps in the light. Lightens the light. Stays up all night.
Trippingovershadows,tippingoverbushels,
lean on every lighted lamppost.
Not a body.
Never anybody any more.
Distant fader, retreater, bon voyager,
over and over and over and ever and ever and ever.
Sometimessomethinggoesallwrongbutturnsoutallright,
and sometimes not, turns out not so hot. That, then, is this.
This is a big “not.”
A mighty tight knot, a slightly loose noose; both might have the might to reduce things to this point. Heaven reabsorbs all the things that are heaven-sent.
13. Epilogue: Refractor
And everything goes to pieces, and even those pieces come apart, they come apart and join together to become part of each other.
A part of a part of a part of a part of a part of what was never broken has been breaking, coming not together into one of our unmaking.
It comes apart, it becomes a part of a part and becomes another part. It goes to pieces and those pieces start to party.
It becomes a part of a part of a part of a part again, fiber by fiber by fiber by fiber by fiber by fiber. Peeled apart and pulled together, bits and parts and pieces broken up, broken down, disintegrated, dis? assembled and particulated.
Drawn together, grown apart, forced together, blown apart.
A head, a foot, a tooth, a beak, a feather, a finger, a meanish streak struggled, fought and sought a way to pull themselves together.
But once it all is thought and said and done and, finally, ignored, the universe becomes with itself quite bored.
A hair, a toe, a slice of life and a pound of flesh are more than enough to satisfy the drive for strife, to smoothen out what once was rough; the body parts that parts of speech can harm and heal, condemn and preach.
We dwell on fractions, on parts per billion, on inserted slivers, shards and shivers, in margins, on borders.
We are sin forgivers, fault forgetters, slightly tight offense committers. Live in the gaps, in the in-betweens, in the spaces and the missing spots.
We hang in cracks and deep ravines, dreaming up every sorrier, feebler plots and schemes, inhabiting tribes in manufactured factions, awkwardly contrived, and feeding on the lurid and minute distractions, coagulating, coalescing and collapsing into clans, congratulating ourselves on corrugated, perforated and punctured plans.
And everything goes to pieces and even those pieces come apart, they come apart and join together to become parts of each other.
A part of a part of a part of a part of a part of what was never broken has been breaking, coming not together into one of our unmaking.
It comes apart, it becomes a part of a part and becomes another part. It goes to pieces and those pieces start to party.
Itbecomesapartofapartofapartofapartagain,
fiber by fiber by fiber by little by little by little…bye bye bye…
We float on matters of degree, in parts, in hints, in subtle clues, upon divisions none can see. Ecstatic, exotic tongues and pointless points of rigid views, we dangle from branches in channels, following tangents, vectors in greens and yellows and various hues, from actions taken in marginal sectors, but in soothing tones with shades of blues.
Drawn from a deep well, by opaque, eternal hands, we were drawn together. Assembly was required for worth and witness.
Fought to a draw, withdrew with quarters, drawn and quartered, bricked and mortared. Everything goes to pieces.
Even those pieces come apart.
What wasn’t broken has been breaking right from the very start.