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Illusions
Body and mind
touch. No pass-
ports involved.
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The Basket Man
The Basket Man moved through a numbing aura
with a hunch of shoulder that appealed to he, and only he.
He cleaned his hands constantly, and then returned
to his hiding place, cradling the face of a wild animal;
glaring green eyes in his belly. The Basket Man
had marvelous eyes but shared them with no one:
he was like a selfish boy with a bag of cat-eyed marbles;
he couldn’t bear finger prints, alien whorls and ridges
upon he, or his possessions, instead, preferred the shoulder
of his basket. The Basket Man found much to his chagrin
that the critics underneath his fingernails, and in the folds
of his neck and in the shallow pond of belly lint, chattered
on whether he slumbered or wakened: “damned critics
won’t leave me alone.”
Many an evening, The Basket Man sat, quill in hand, composing
his memoirs. Because he lived in a basket he didn’t work
at the proverbial “big oak desk,” or the tiny “school kid’s desk”;
not even an orange crate. He sat, instead, upon arthritic knees,
balancing a legal pad into the long hours of the night.
So far he’d only come up with the title: “Damned Critics
won’t leave me alone.” Hell, it was a beginning;
Thursday the 21st the Basket Man lay in a cocoon of chill
and sweat. Unclaimed, like a knife used in a murder, and tossed
casually between the gratings of a storm drain. Meanwhile,
“something, once anchored” roamed the house
seeking a way out.
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