AND SO WE BEGIN

AND SO WE BEGIN SAM CEISLER

Ever seen beauty, Beauty? What did they sell us? The door keeps getting smaller But at least the sun is shining Spring passed on a 72 degree February day We put a picture on the internet Followed it all with a drunken shower And I was still recovering when I caught my flight What a shame we’re not the same

Keith and Kenny, Richards and Rogers respectively, John and Joe, Coltrane and Cocker respectively, It seemed they had it figured out But so did that damned horse Coltrane That fidgety horse in the third stall, from high school, from that job on the farm Was it a farm? That damned ornery horse, and that woman who liked to ride him In Audis and fresh coats and pressed breeches Their polished hooves clicking against the mats While I slip soundlessly Horse shit in the soles of my Chippewa boots I, the new American. The same as the old American. The Quiet American. The Ugly American. They, the new Englishmen, the new Englishwomen, and their ornery bloody Horses. In the winter I had to break Coltrane’s buckets when they iced over The illegal grooms and I working barehanded Gloves drying in the vents of the barn heater And after work I’d go home to a warm shower The Middle Class High School American

Have I gotten older or am I imagining the time? I think I must not be Years of love and sacrifice pass by the wayside so quickly when One doesn’t want to show up to sister’s birthday party smelling like cigarettes and One doesn’t want to be without enough tobacco to last a day and One who decides their purposeless life should have purpose and proposes to excel and Doesn’t lose themselves asking God for answers in whiskey dens globally and Trapped internally, the minutes seem to fall away Don’t they?

And so we begin, As the sun rises again In this finally Spring In this perpetually Winter In this endless Summer Allow me to dance through fields of endless bounty Allow this appetite of mine to sate itself Are you listening? Allow me to begin As once again I ask