recycling

until i realized
my mind was a recycling bin
fortitudinous
like a blender with a wonky blade
cattywompus cerebellum bloating and blistering bubbling
awhirring cauldron

i would never have thought the trash i pick up on my morning stroll
would be the thing i tossed in the brain
of me, head hinged up like the hood of a car
hoping for recycling as a poem

of course there is no such thing as trash
really. it was a word first applied to humans in 1604, in othello
comes from the norwegian "trask" ("'fallen leaves and twigs'") which reminds me that the trasks
daughters were friends of my older sisters',
and that they only ever ate on paper plates which they then threw out
a form of women's liberation, no dishes: trash eating on trash

one of them, the younger, d.,
beat me up when i was in kindergarten
what does it mean to be pulped by garbage? lower than low
i can tell you

my memory, half used refuse, brailles over the date: 10-25
knowing seventeen years ago something significant happened on this day
but the letters have faded off the page of my memory like scuffed newsprint mouldering in a recycling bin

instead of trying to figure it out, dig through the boxes of papers carefully
sequestered on basement shelves (the same storage system as my dead wife)
i just hunker down in the midst of an october storm that promises to rip every gorgeous
[indescribably colored which we will call] crimson leaf off the dogwood:
there are ghosts in my blender
my feeble brain, my lower than trash trash compactor

to make paper
you take the riffraffand duff, the broken bits, the shredded paper refuse, the trask
and blend it - all the letters and meanings bleed out into pulp
and then push it on a screen, flat, and let it dry
memories in my recycling bin brain are just so, reconstituted

my grey matter, pulp and my memory a pulping screen
taking the glimmering memories, faded lettering, and bits
and making something new, something clear, a canvas for the coming day

soon we will move beyond othering and there will be no other-than, no refuse
no refusing, only this recycling alzheimer-like montaging
or even less than this, no trash to pick up, a time
when our dead fade and the ghosts stop yammering
[a time of erasure?]
a time of clarity and peace


Scooter Cascadia
10-25-10
Taurus Moon, Scorpio Sun