Charles Freeland
Opiate Summary (A) Nothing can ever truly be set aside because the notion of boundaries is alien to everything but the human mind. It does not reside out there among the crocodiles or the rows of petunias that seem to separate one house from another, but in all actuality blend and stitch together everything around them, like those chemicals that serve as catalysts in experiments of the sort we were required to perform in high school. In an attempt to remember these, she winds a piece of floss around one of her toes. The one he ignores most thoroughly whenever he gets around to touching her feet. That he spots it almost immediately, that he jots something down in the notebook that has the lush green cover on it and which she is always meaning to snoop through if she can ever find the time and the proper mind-set, none of this concerns her as much as does his obvious glee now in performing the most routine tasks. The opening up of a can of tuna. The slopping its contents onto a Kaiser roll. The Existing Monuments Form an Ideal Order Among Themselves We've begun settling our conflicts with a tuning fork. Occasionally, first-class tickets of the sort mentioned in meetings. No one can remember why they were upgraded. Why they didn't come with the cherries jubilee. I suppose we ought to be writing some of this down in case anybody is interested later in the brand of archeology that has been discredited at present, but which will surely experience a revival in popularity. If only because our minds can't keep traveling in the same direction indefinitely. They can't be harnessed like so many yaks and turned towards the setting sun. After all, straight lines appear only when they are necessary for the construction of bridges. And the mapping out of narrative after the narrative has come to its end. They rarely appear in nature because there is no such thing as nature. And if there were, we would never forgive ourselves for having marched away from it like soldiers ordered to the periphery for their poor eyesight. Their inability to remember other people's names twenty minutes after the introduction. Earthmaker's Ceremony Par Excellence I'm sure it wasn't Heraclitus who first observed the way we satisfy ourselves like beasts. But if you were to grant him the origin of that observation, just the same, what harm would come of it? Who would we be unjust to if we can't see that other person in the dark corridors of time? This is why we must admire those who are satisfied with reason. Those who call it various flattering names. Like handmaid. And broadcaster. Once we start this process, we are unlikely to stop again until every last participle, every grasshopper and speck of dirt, has been moved from one place to another. Even if it is only a few millimeters from where it started. If we can't find it then, something is amiss. Our failure has been arranged ahead of time by unseen forces. They are like those tires that, no matter how frequently you take them in to get balanced, still wobble slightly when you are driving down the highway. So slightly, in fact, you can't tell whether this might simply be your imagination acting up again. The way it acts up on the mountain when you first become aware that you have an imagination. When you first begin to visualize other outcomes than those you are shooting for. Like the heel of your foot slipping on loose sand, sending you plummeting half mile to earth. Or your convincing the guide to have lunch with you once you have made it home safely. Once you each realize whatever antipathy you felt previously was merely a result of the tricky purchase and the howling winds. Charles Freeland lives and works in Dayton, Ohio. His book-length poem, Eros & (Fill in the Blank) is forthcoming from BlazeVOX. He is also the author of the collection Through the Funeral Mountains on a Burro (Otoliths, 2009) and the chapbooks Eulalie & Squid (Chippens Press, 2009), Furiant, Not Polka (Moria, 2008), The Case of the Danish King Halfdene (Mudlark, 2008) and Where We Saw Them Last (Lily Press, 2007). His website is The Fossil Record (charlesfreelandpoetry.net) and his blog is Spring Cleaning in the Labyrinth of the Continuum (charlesfreeland.blogspot.com).
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