my mind is a gravity car
that only rolls downhill.
last night, the sky,
mellowed by the gentle rain,
sighed and was still.
darkness melted
all the shapes
that were a landscape

as i kept going downhill
in my haphazard way
from nowhere to nowhere.
tonight, the north wind
will come in whitely
riding a country air
like a tune from a redneck fiddle.

i try to climb
the dark mountain of wisdom
but after a brief struggle
i wisely surrender
to the unrelenting.

your mind is not like mine, you say.
yours is a plush toy
stuffed with the hollows
between time and time,
a shapeless joie de vivre
and fuzzy remnants of yesterday–
all a pillow for a weary, childish head.

so what of the mind of poetry, then?
that thick glass falling,
that square frame of a door marked EXIT,
those pots and pans in a row
to collect rainwater from a leaking roof:

Bullshit trompe-d’oeil