i'm from a different country where they call you cosmonauts

I’m apt to get sentimentally attached to things. Everything comes along with a string attached to it (an unbleached cotton string, the kind that comes all wrapped around a cardboard roll and was always found in our kitchen drawer at home) to tie on memories. Like kite strings with all the little flags. A story parading through my brain as I ride around on my bicycle (which is what I mostly do these homeless days). Raisin toast always reminds me of sitting on the back stoop of my Grandpa’s when he’d take us out and point out the stars. Maybe he only did it once but it’s stuck in my brain and so as I’ve sat these last two days munching on raisin toast I think of constellations and warm nights and green carpet and white cinderblock walls. Maybe I’ll even remember my Dad’s stories of hiding beets so he wouldn’t have to eat them or maybe I’ll remember that one Easter when I left hints EVERYWHERE that all I wanted was a loaf of raisin bread. I was thinking about being sentimental because I was finishing up a movie* when I was eating the last little bites of raisin toast. It had this song**, the kind that plays through credits and makes you want the film to go on and on because it’s pulling at you and ties up a million kite strings and sets them afloat.

I learned how to gut a fish last night. It’s a good thing.

A poem that leans nigh unto tartuffe but I'm the hypocrite:

I'm from a different country where they call you cosmonauts
I'm from a different time o they don't let their garbage rot
I'm from a different kind of place where space and time do not exist
oh not as yours or mine or theirs but merely someone's its

It's not too far to walk to school or the little corner store
We sometimes pass the time by remembering there's no more
and what you do is not of yours oh not your chores and not your choice
but part of one well mechanically smoothly flowing voice

oh east germany
what you do to me
you know the best of bands
and maintain local brands
but you've tied up all my hands

at the stately parties i'm feeling super fly
because we've all got the same suit, shirt and tie
just one, because we're locally conceived
convictions of sharing and looking how we all believe

I was going to add in another line but I don't think i will.
The end.
DC al fine.


*Goodbye Lenin!
** Summer 78 by Yann Tiersen