Leaning over railings
You get smaller
As you get higher
Begging the perspective
Of the eight people dining
In the courtyard
Below
Begging the perspective of a stair climber
Retrieving coffee
From an ancient convent
Which is like a monestary
Which is like a beautiful villa
In the heart of an old city
And not for lack of rum
These tacks would set on chairs
And follow the stars
Dotting small doting bricks
In straight projection
Finding comfort in cold tile
And shuddered window slats
Hounding the root of evil
And praying for Giovanni Ribisi
In lighter news
The rain that is projected
Onto our devices
Must be wrong
So says Denise at the corner of Trickster and Permutable
When it says rain
It means a possible drizzle
Late in the day
A pause from the sun
Time to reflect
On Giovanni Ribisi
And how he might look climbing the stairs
Instead of you
Oddly staying the same
As the camera obscura
Flips him into a thousand lights and darks
And we paint him
Into the scenery
Just enough to make us feel sloppy
The convent nuns
Praying for both of us
All of us
In a triangulation to gods
But not the Spanish ones
They come later and with guilded promises
Like value, continentality, and soul
Besides the ramification of getting smaller
Part nova
Part turtle
I am sure we are all happy
That we are happy now
With stock in the afterlife
Becoming like stiff soil
With rocks in the way of anything that resembles fingers
Save the worm
Who always gets his man
Split sides and slime aside
We forget to mind the trees
But not here
In learning our roles
Or actually relearning our ultimate part
Finding in ourselves the magic that is Giovanni Ribisi
Accepting the loose banisters
Knowing that we too will break ribs on winding city walls
Drinking the free coffee because it is good
Walking away from people that compare this day
This place
This corner of experience
To anything other
Than today, here, now
Shedding our inner non-Giovanni Ribisi
No matter how painful
Each folded-over wrinkle of slough
Like an elastic band around the ribs
Donating those corseted shell pipes
To science
Or not
But never
Not today
Not getting smaller when we walk upstairs
Not getting bigger when we come down
--
4.24.09
