I was all empty,

fully transparent;

anything said

immediately materialized

into grammatical objects

on the chain of events

I filled the mug with coffee

at all times and always,

perhaps oiled out

in an old painting

by one of the Dutch masters,

surface cracked,

up for restoration

- or maybe hung out

on the horizon of events,

thinking about myself

All brains are thinking

about themselves

Bare feet feel the floors,

tiptoe down staircases,

morning stars shining

through windows,

reaching into tense houses,

standing erect

with stiff shoulders,

the day forced on the living,

knees half way down their legs,

elbows out on their arms

somewhere,

chimneys smoking,

everything turning

The more imaginative

raise their hands

in front of their faces;

move them around

in fancy motions,

pondering the mechanical

ingenuity

of their intricate patterns

- but these beings hardly reach

some kind of awareness

before they fade,

some of them leaving faint traces

in notebooks;

others just evaporating,

silences echoing

with nothings to say,

words budding

through all kinds of futures

and pasts

Teeth were there to be picked

Skeletons were mechanical playmates;

the long last

was long and lasting

My brother was soldering

something

in an old valve radio,

must've been the late 1950s,

I recall the smell of the iron,

the gray smoke rising

in delicate, thin swirls

between our faces,

the dog lying asleep over on the bed

The barn had not yet burned

Winter was hard;

a farmhand

- his breath rising like smoke -

was heating the spark plug motor

of an old Massey Ferguson tractor

with a blowtorch,

the vehicle shed doors open,

the intense white noise

scorching the barnyard,

caps pulled down,

gloves on in the cold,

the day fresh and dangerous