Just Don’t Call Me Ishmael

I’m beyond knowing the Big Picture,
Art, my betters do, just never finicky
raven pivoting for any hot, bloody mess,
geese gone suddenly summer north,
grubworm, copperhead, about Outback business,
without notice or care, moonlight shine,
shimmer over desert mountain tarn,
restive, swollen night cumuli, dawn-burst,
no White Whale, odd, obsessive boss,
life-altering quest, deathless smart mate,
just curious, like them, about timeless things
of this world, artless in their living way,
book-learning gone awry.

(Y)am Man

Who knows but that on lower frequencies, I speak for you?
-R. Ellison, Invisible Man-
-Popeye the Sailor Man, “I yam what I yam,” 1933 cartoon-

Back in again from Out There where nothing lives
but brute critter and fowl, crawlies close to earth,
fetid, rank vegetation, acres of baked silica and stone
and mesa, dry gulch, arroyo, mountain, yet wild and alive,
agelessly young in unlovely, though not unloved, withdrawal,
offering nothing but subtly fresh, spikey, misshapen selves
to eye, arid air, unstinting sun and wind, where time melts,
as if it never left its burn. Email, text, from schoolmates,
some close, most not, wanting to catch up, hook-up, know me,
assuming I’m that that me, then, I suppose, which gives pause
if past is past, or not, imprimaturs Aristotle-Freud-Faulkner
promulge as tragic family fiat, all I know for sure I’m here now,
beamed-up back up into cyberspace, into boyhood, codes,
hi-tech wiring, AI stuff I know nothing about, as though
back at the hop, Cottman Ave. Burger & Malt Shoppe, Joanie’s,
Friday?, as if I never left who I was, online snaps current enough
to satisfy any nosy Parker who now live airily on IG, X, Facebook,
Snapchat or Tik Tok, Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, no techie me,
I never answer (I know, not cool), in decadent aughts patois du jour,
never OG retweet, slide into DMs, mentor guilty schoolboy habit,
let a past have me its own, as I was, maybe still am, ¿quién sabe?,
and so sophomorically (my bad!), make it an in-your-face, retro,
Wilt/Dr. J. slam dunk, be like Air Mike, ghost them all.