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It's Time
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After a beer I started feeling really religious and I don't mean Catholic I mean
worshiping the grain the breasts that woman bared to the Jesuit the backtalkers
that burned and the headless woman who had not waited for a lazy lover and suffered
his sudden violence funny how she rested easy and he came back to haunt the bridges
sparkling in the night water the restless streetlamps that shudder on and off as
I pass by softened by the leather feel of cobblestones beneath my boots the power of
speaking three languages the integrity of silence and of not answering the absurd
questions of drunk empty streetcornered men choosing instead to listen to the cobblestones
soft under my boots rolling with the earth sinking with the blood and mud, to the stars
their imprint on the land no more significant than mine on a three day mute walking tour
thinking about imprints like those that Tycho Brahe studied measuring the stars to which
I drink the first of another beer, a taste as complex as good wine, my first time theorizing
how one alcoholic drink compares to another without the incentive of a booze snob to impress
I'm having this thought about complex beer all to myself having too a middle-finger salute
to the Jesuit oppressors glorified in the grey rock that also locks up their worthless bones somewhere
I'm having a city I'm having complexity in a glass I'm having a stony truth I'm having a beer
here in Prague with cell phones ringing all around me but having no connection to my past except
for the train ticket and all the pain in my pores that couldn't dissolve without
scrubbing and a good hot deep tub of water taken against the express wishes of the
hostel owner but irresistable after I manufactured a plug from ashtray and plastic bag
oh the ridiculous pain that lumped in the steaming water funny how shared showers keep me
from really scrubbing to the quick of fear funny how even the best-loved aren't
good company when it's time to have a city to myself to have a trilingual silence
to just have a beer.
24 March, 1998, Prague
Sara S. Moore
Copyright © 1998
