Goat in the Snow

A goat is not a sheep, though I know people
who have made this mistake not meaning
to be flippant. This is not how to start a fire

with sticks.
I do not believe that music comes from a place of silence,
just as life does not begin from a point of stillness.

After passing the farm with the goat
it was important to slow down.
Hello goat. Hello officer. So easy to lose track

when going downhill. It isn’t always easy to become calm
after such an outburst of excitement.
Some people don’t have their animals down.

I myself would not recognize a mongoose,
but I know the word mongoose and I know it refers
to an animal, a mammal. I imagine it to be

long-torsoed and beady-eyed, but I don’t know.
Remember when we were at that place
where the floor tilted? That was a place

where we could close our eyes.
They were closed. They were open.
We were accumulating information.

Sometimes this meant we were filing things
and we hate filing things and so it goes.
Later we were laughing.

If you fumble, you’d better laugh.
I’ve seen a goat chase a llama and it’s hard
to take that seriously. Some things

we will repeat over and over again.
I said, I want to be a fly on the wall.
Someone said, Be a goat in the snow.

We like to think of shipwrecks
as beautiful fuck-ups
and that goats’ eyes are the secret to goats.

I think if I had a soul it would be saying soul.
To move quietly past a fence without hesitation
is what a goat does.

 

How to Control a Blackout

In the tall grass with their heads down
they held the shape of sheep, but one
couldn’t tell for sure. Oh the uncertainty!
Someone says, Your blood should stay
in your veins. A flow of information
to the hand. I say to someone,
I don’t know what I want. What I mean
to say is, This here is a fuse box.
I mean to say, I know nothing about fuses.
Did I say fuses? I meant to say facts.
I need to get good at tracking. Track
my own thought back to a black horse.
It’s hard to carry a horse on your back.
It is an eyeful. It’s like permutation symmetry.
It is a matter of experimental fact.
It’s like standing in a fire pit. You are
standing in a fire pit. What do you say?
Someone will ask, How did you get here?
They’ll give you a tune up. They’ll say,
Tone it down. You’ll be a wolf in the water.
You’ll be a wolf in the water.

 

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