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.