geometry of innocence
After the photos of Jérôme Cherrier:
Looking Up
the sky at the top of the cage.
walls of windows capturing
columns of light.
somewhere the cloud awaits
its end, the rain
transformative
from billowing white
to raging brown,
a sequence of stardom
from top to bottom
capturing attention
with all the magnetism
friendly gods command.
.
saturday’s stepchild
in the heartless, thoughtless days of summer 2020 someone didn’t look back,
or even ahead, as the everything was is right in front, within pissing distance.
i picked up the backpack and walked through the woods in the middle of town
where even if you got lost riding hood you could find your way out in a jiffy.
the end of the forest just a stone’s throw if you had any kind of arm at all
to pick up a rock and fling it as if the target were standing there, near enough
to blow its head off if it didn’t see you coming. leadership these days leaves
a lot to be desired, but then, desire was a streetcar, not a community, a family
unit working to keep its shit together while the world cried out to deaf ears
and the political theater played out with you in the front row, helplessly watching
the passing of time. thank god there are other poets out there digitizing thoughts
or we’d be knee deep in the crap they feed ghouls and chickens. follow the bleeder
if you want to eat; he doesn’t give a fuck if you climb aboard or fall under the wheels.
it’s always a curtain call, morning, noon or night, playing the part but never well.
© Mike Foldes
Mike Foldes is a graduate of The Ohio State University in anthropology. He has edited and published magazines, poetry anthologies, chapbooks, alternate newspapers, technical publications, and was an editor and columnist with Gannett newspapers in Binghamton, NY. He is founder of the online magazine Ragazine.CC, author of Sleeping Dogs: A true story of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and Sandy: Chronicles of a Superstorm. His work has appeared in publications worldwide, some in translation into Romanian, Hungarian, French and Spanish.
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