Democrat, Illinois - The ElectroLounge

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Step three. Follow the shepard. Unable to consider your life your own, its glints &
gashes your mark & remembrance on the Universe, better to memorize gesture & verse,
better to kneel when it’s kneeling time & how high when boss daddy says jump.
Tis all, tis all. The brain you wash is your own. How clean, how clear, what roots,
what fruit.
Slave to nothing, so preaches the guru, free to shape energy, color time, pluck joy from any foulness.
Now a coin in the plate, now a dollar for the great book to swallow you all, watch him, guru,
watch him & learn—
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“He brought great books & the deep trick of empathy, it was centuries ago, he was a
creature of sly eros & long rhythms, a man the women pleasured by with the leanest glance.
Now we remember his songs & forget his flesh. Now we burn within his calcified smiles” the
preacher sang with smooth of ice, the deceptive calm of a sleeping face, he sang very fine.
“He fed our hearts on a diet of yearn & retreat, scholared us in paucity, showing its
subtlest machinations, leave us not standing right but standing angry!” The preacher black
fouls the sky with his words, crossing countless angry hands, conjure erotic & darkly funny
too.
“He met a lover of finest passions, & the halting twig within cracked. His later years
a second life, one long in woolen nights & silken music.” River smooth but unswimmable,
current of words mainline directly to skin, to blood. This is not fair. This is how it’s done.
“I want to learn his lesson. I want to know his name. My heart blows scarce at night
& I am unsure.” Tears from the wet nameless source within. Faith what feet walk toward on
an empty road. Faith what’s left when nothing’s left.
“I cannot be there when you arrive, & you won’t like hearing this. Nobody will be
there in that moment. Memories, perhaps. After, I don’t know.”
The TV flips off again & the crowd at Luna T’s Cafe’s bar cries its disapproval.
TripTown now comes on randomly for minutes at a time, no more. Over, the TV, unflicked
on, flicks off.
Some look darkly at Mr. Bob the barman. He shrugs. “It’s a strange show.”
“But where did the kid go & who’s the preacher?”
“Hey, & where’s our preacher? I bet he’s who inspired them, all that loud talk of
his.”
Mr. Bob doesn’t know this either. Dr. Arnold T. Knickerbocker has been absent T’s
for nearly a week now. Rich had gone to see him, said the old man would be by, but he
hadn’t.
No word from Noisy Children yet. They’d left in several vehicles promising word
sometime during their first show. The cafe had seemed quieter than the absence of five
people should have made it. It was like a slumber, how it felt now, a daydreaming building.
Meanwhile, baseball season was at hand & the champion Red Sox were again about
their business. Mr. Bob found himself holding the sports page without reading.
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