January

Issue 40

The cartographer who dwells behind my eyes, who maps the continents of desire and imagination for the navigator who charts the course of dreams and nightmares for the pilot who traverses the landscapes of time and illusion where fabulous cities come and grow and go, inhabited by creatures human and not so, whose tales resemble those living and dead as forecast by mages and twice-told by poets on foolscap and parchment in volumes unread, that relate and regale the sentence called life and all it entails -- the passing of passion, the hero's hard quest, the war on the mountain waged for a woman, the bittersweet warmth of the sun falling west -- while I watch from a distance and wait in a queue, and turn out my pockets and rummage my baggage in search of a ticket for lands I once knew, and wonder which flight holds my name written full, what map's jagged passage shows which way to go -- are the engines still revving? does the jet stream still flow? should I drink from the fire and dance in the snow? could I lose/find my self in the quickening reflection of some high afterglow? -- I blink for a moment and toss back my head -- the water is running, the steam fogs the glass, I see that the blood on my razor is red. -- (First appeared in the author's collection Cold Tomorrows, Gothic Press, 1998)