Mantra generator/Mantra recycler

Mantra generator 

Unplugged 
it sits humming, 
a matte gray box
with steel fittings, 
inscrutable 
as a head-turned cat.

In the right mood
its hidden tines 
punch out suggestions
for you on its
coiled white paper
tongue, furled out 
indifferently 
onto the floor. 

You might get 
My karma ran over 
your dogma, then 
Rumpelstiltskin—-
don’t even pretend 
to make these 
your secret watchwords. 

Wait it out. 
The profane 
exuberance of spit-
out tickertape 
will sputter 
then run clear,
drop something
that chimes
in your skull like
a handbell 
keyring 
mnemonic 
stone.

Mantra recycler

"Keyring" was a gift
meant as the soundtrack
to your mind riding
the surf of your breath

but it kept meaning
itself, jingling around,
incessant counterpoint
to your lungs' attempt
at perfect sine waves,

and taking you from key
to ignition to open roads
to carbon molecules and
thence to water lapping,
higher each year,
against the NYPD 
impound pier along 
the Hudson River,
which shrugs, becomes 
an inland sea.

Collect "keyring" and all these 
strayed watchwords,
with a quixotic virtue--
like your buckets of 
shower water, amidst
so much waste--
in case you meet someone
for whom it actually
unlocks something,
giving them a strange
equanimity as you 
face the work ahead.