Righty tighty, lefty loosey
Is how my boys remember which way to turn
Nuts and faucet knobs and such.
I look at my mind
And plead for a catchy expression
To tell me how to turn down the flow or turn it off:
Photographic images pop quickly
As if taken with a powerful flash unit,
Or they come up slowly,
Like a ghostly creation in the tray of developer under soothing orange-brown light;
Poems come in smooth cadences or choppy
Verses
That peel away and reveal heart and soul and fears and lusts and ambitions and finality and confusions;
Stories outline themselves while essays ignited by passion,
Turn sometimes into pyres and sometimes
They disappear like lit magic paper;
Projects of all ilk line up for attention-
Compilations of photographs of women who inspire and a-muse,
Anthologies of stories that tell of different times and places,
Books that yawp and books that stop
Disrespect, ignorance, coldness and fear.
Righty tighty, lefty loosey
Is how my boys remember which way to turn
Nuts and faucet knobs and such.
The rule works on beer bottle tops, I've found.
And sometimes then the flow diminishes into peace.
