One-legged Bike Rider

The other day I wrote about memorials;
By now my memory ––ﯾﺎﺩ–– has gone haywire
––No more private history at all––like a
Chin unrecognizable all of a sudden:
Clean-shaven plus a stupor-sagged jaw.
Memory's good at least for giving
Any visage some intelligent expression
Yet it can let you down at any moment; it is
Recalls, no writs, thus can't be taken for granted
It's too smart to undersign or leave material traces.

Even today
Those tiny birds come and go
Alighting on wires to fly off almost instantly.
Brainless pricks. But we're all too sentimental anyway.

The City of Paris as a final destination and as a thoroughfare.

The long first ten years truly squandered in an open-air
_________________________________________madhouse–
Way too many lunatics taking turns to keep in touch with
And still not one overmuch to retain scattered tales.
But what's the sense in reporting anecdota?

Say, the one of that maimed round-the-world tripping biker
Clamped on his heavy cycle with left a leg and right an armpit
_____________________________________________crutch.
To know him meant to fully agree with him, but I never learned
If he succeeded after having made it up to me, a long ride
From overseas just to show me this personal standpoint.
As vivid and unrecountable as a fistful of wet pebbles.

Experiences aren't performances.
To get a performance or narrative effect
Most limbs of a man must remain undetectably
Clad in black bib tights, like in Prague's Magic Lantern.
Simple gobbets of a guy, a guy at times already short of one leg.

Once reduced to a skeleton he'll remain, now an outline
Making sense; to have it rackabones re-coated I can't help:
You'll have to take flesh graft from the stock of your own life.

February 13, 2008