The Barrel is Surely Coming Down the Hill

It would be good to brush the crumbs
from our shirtfronts. It would be good
to walk farther on, beyond the diagrammed neighborhoods
inscribed between highways. It would be good
to pick up our feet with a purpose other
than to examine the pattern of tread.
Very specialized products are on the march,
outmoding once-blessed enterprises. The old things are pressed
into flat cakes. My muffin is on steroids and the defenses
are not holding up, and there are agonal mounds of sheddings, trash, and dirt
painted over and cast as novelties or ignored,
and in the world of configurations of just-is,
the real project has been to deregulate the bonds
between events and the memory of events
so we can contain ourselves.
But when the light comes on all over town
it looks like a sudden failure of horses everywhere.

Gillian Kiley