I came across an outside state

From a collection by Gary Knapton entitled "Semantic Dissonance; or The Echelon Rink"

I left the house and skipped the paving stones

Where leaves and broken bones of trees amassed

Dull pond-life pondered life at last

I was alone

But didn’t feel an ounce of what alone can feel

The light was reeled on films of rays that skittered under golden trays of smiling cloud

The heat got loud

But loud to heat is flesh to meat

Heat’s always loud

Hot deafening silence tall and proud is all I can remember of my childhood days

I thought of all the garden ways of passing time

The way we used to wile away long summer days like scenes from plays

How at the time we sang and danced in random rhyme, unkempt, un-hived

Yet now it all seems so contrived

Just actors reading through the verse of something scripted out

So what’s it all about ?

I never knew. I never even thought I knew. I never even thought the thought was mine to think.

I didn’t know I didn’t know

I swam the drink. I ate the plate. I dreamed a purely conscious fate

Until that day

The day for which I had to wait

When just beyond the garden gate

I came across an outside state


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