poemimage

Shapes animated like a bird’s crazy beak in a silly cartoon

remind me of a seagull

blabbering at somebody, somebody who? maybe… Daffy Duck!

He comes to mind for a not complicated reason.

For some reason (in whatever year since 2014 it was) I made this GIF using the book cover.

The gold & ochre jungle leaves remind me of a B&W Humphrey Bogart movie.

In real life Humphrey Bogart was gold & ochre though some say more of a pleasing technicolour.

In real life the book is B&W & printed on cream-coloured paper.

I stand in line at the (big box) grocery store behind a guy with trees printed on his sky blue arm.

Something is in progress ^{in the centre of the store}

if the centre of the store ^{is even there anymore.}

The numbers on my receipt (dancing a Latin dance)

signify symmetry and imbalance

simultaneously, as if an omen, as if

smoke rising from an oil lamp, as if

in flight through my psyche still there

or following a jagged shoreline

to a river, thrashing ^{in the centre of the store}

if the centre of the store ^{is even there anymore}

if the river, voluminous as thunder & thrashing

hypnotized ^{is even there anymore.}