Out of the wilder than wilderness,
stagger into the corner drugstore.
I'm waiting to fix a prescription
& hear a voice behind my shoulder,
or I think I hear because I can't see her,
a woman's voice saying, I shit you not,
"I am your in-store prophet." What?
"My mother & I travel around doing
in-store prophecies. My mother had
a dream, & I had a dream—the President,"
(except it was the last one then—Bush,)
"dead on the White House lawn, by
a Mafia hitman," for some transgression
or other, no doubt.
"Soon," she said.
Several years ago now, etched in
brain lipids, wrong as memory,
& now etched in sand,
logging into my in-store prophet:
Call me Friend, friend, nezpapa?
Mont Blanc papiel du rollez
like bon temps & that
temptation, flicking tongue,
hairshirt & honey locust.
Let's say, "Rain down hail & rock
me rider," in a rockabilly twang &
kind of pelvic thrust, as I spell it out:
"Rain down hail on Highly Suspicios."
"Rain down hail on So Damn Galore."
Somebody stop me now: "Rain down
legs of fiery rock me rider out of Iraq."
"Rain down, hell yes, rain down hail-
stones on the brim of liquifaction."
"Rain down rider & rock me Hey Zeus."
"Reign down, bring it on, hail, hail."
& who would ask Buddhas for time?
& who would ask Quetzalcohuatl to moult?
& who would ask Jesus to write on sand?
Sacred text & testament of vanity,
an insanity or magic, maybe magic
for the undeserving.
Oh, groveling.
Logged in now to my
what's in store prophecy,
eloquent as delphic mephitic
mutterings in a circle,
sages scribe & scribble.
In stores soon:
The In-Store Prophet
Prophecizes Hail Hail
Rock & Rollez Again.
30 pieces of peace out.
Take those Italian hiking boots, you'll walk most of the way,
you and the one-and-a-half, big you and woman and child
walking together for fifty years, more if you just keep walking,
walk and talk and walk some more, singing the horizon,
the rise and fall and pitch and roll of mountain, bluff, and lowland,
naming each in a song, shuddering into an ecstatic jig
in recognition that a walk like this just might take two pairs of boots.
Buy cross-trainer sport shoes to give your journey spring,
renewing hope with a spritely step, bounce, lift, torque, and speed
for dodging potholes and pitfalls, to keep up with changing woman
and the butterfly child, who seemingly float and drift
like music or dust motes, though you desperately need grounding
to feel the earth's resonance, so buy the very best pair
to tred on air and water with the lightness of a good sport.
Find your old dancing slippers, the ones of blood-red leather,
supple as long leg muscles, to leap and cavort and spin
in moonwalk or fox trot, for you'll need to slide easily
from a slow swirling waltz to the peppery samba or mambo,
so you can pirouette around as graceful as a cat
and show your two partners this is the path to follow,
with lightsome stride to slip in and out of dreams.
Get some humongous yellow clown feet to levitate the journey's weight
with light and wholesome humor, because you understand the joke
lies between matrimony and marriage, the first coming from Mother,
the second but a bond whose chafe may be salved
if you stand upside down with a gibbous grimace, (laughing
at a leaking glass, red-hot chewing gum, even sex novelties,)
or soothed by the crescent moon of a grin, the full moon O of surprise.
Gene Keller—El Paso poet, musician, teacher—professes the 99 Names of Poet as Maker, Seer, Healer, Singer, and Storyteller.