a slow turn to the left

a slow turn to the left

driving these familiar residential streets after work,

and a glance to the right reveals

a woman picking up a scrawny husky

around its middle, lifting it down the two steps to the yard,

and placing it there, presumably for the start of a walk.

but what do I know: I have to continue on, because I’m locked into this life’s

laws and obligations, and as much as I fantasized in 2020

that soon we’d be able to drive any which way on the freeway

and fuck in the street,

the walls closed back in

and once again pleasure was mostly just offered

at the periphery of intent.

that was a big old victorian back there, whose broad porch

the human and briefly-airborne dog were coming down off of,

and maybe that person — and likely their partner —

had lifted it up with love

and set it down in nearly the same spot too,

to feel young again and of use

for a flash in the blanket shake of its beautiful life.

but of course you know that I meant that metaphorically —

not that that house was literally

jacked up and slid over,

set down a couple feet from where it began and refurbished,

although the real can certainly sit snugly

within the contours of the umbrella of the abstract —

because to quote my hometown’s most esoteric living artist,

del the funky homosapien:

enterprisin’ wise men look to the horizon

thinkin’ more capitalism is the wisdom

and imprison all citizens empowered with wisdom

we keep the funk alive by talking with idiom

and while I might have the vernacular of a collage artist,

to quote someone else,

you knew where I was going nonetheless,

because we two lifted this old dog of a poem up together

and set it on this path.