Turning Away From A Bookshelf

                    “You like it hot, Gordy, don’t you?”





“Right now as much as you think you know,
you don’t know the half of it. Right now
you’re just one little guy with a big conspiracy theory
and no proof. And the world is full of them.
So, Zane, you take great care in what else
you choose to learn.”

from David Twohy’s, “The Arrival”

Extradition battle over Viktor Bout


Daughter of US ambassador to Thailand
plunges to death in New York

“I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center...”

— Condoleezza Rice, 2002

quoted in Conspiracy Theories And Masturbation

There’s an old man trying to put a book on a shelf
but there are already so many books on the shelf
there’s no room for the new book among the other books.

There’s a young woman playing a flute, improvising
a melody with her eyes closed, her body swaying.

There’s a rumbling sound from outside as a truck drives past.

There are six groups of people standing, softly sobbing.

There are six bodies on the floor, not moving, silent.

There are people standing, whispering on telephones.

There are people sitting, pressing keys on computers.

The old man gives up trying to squeeze a book between
books already on the shelf and turns the book sideways
and slides it horizontally on top of the books
already on the shelf wedged tightly from side to side.

The young woman improvising a flute melody
plays a staccato phrase mezzoforte piano,
an exhalation fugue with the truck noise from outside.

Unending episodes. A theme forever seeking
recapitulation. A due. Ad libitum.
Affannato. The noise outside. The improvised song.

There is an old man turning away from a bookshelf.

There is a young woman playing a song on a flute.

Affannato