trapped

realizing I’d painted myself into a corner,
my solution was to make it bigger
—FRED TOMASELLI

in one room of a house
where all rooms were small
the action of leveling desire
into a larger existence was a calling
up of gods      a throwing up
of arms      a praising of foundations
revoking generations of coincidence
so unlikely as this process was
to those of us who could not
hear it—the invocations      the ululations
the evocations—were overcome
by ambition leaping
to un-corner a nave of angles
into the roundness of an apse
a larger prayer      a loftier choir
a congregation of hosannas      a quake of SHAKERS

the arrangement of disarrangement
a form of derangement      would also serve—
serve the way soft-serve replaces frozen
the way salted-caramel replaces fudge
the way JOHN CAGE replaced the I CHING
words unsuited to his taste
—the way ascots die a quiet death—
the way everything waits—even waiting—
for a time which does not exist elsewhere
but rather in the singular—
the larger room swept clean
the windows washed in a bath of light
the claustrophobia of corners freed
from shadow      unlike the mouse
before being removed from the scene
beneath a hover of wings