I'm clearing the decks

meaning I'm changing the sheets
and picking up books spilling out of the corners
and avoiding looking at papers spilling under my feet
and getting walked on because they won't get out of the way quick
quick but oozle slippery and jostling through mendicant-minded shuffles
pretending to be - or hungrily trying to be - awfully important
despite their sway-backed upset and crumpled corners
and avalanche-juddering whooshes
send foolscap slithering and splaying
across a Sammy Army vaguely Oriental mat

that traps the unwary foot or crossed big toe on its curly edge
and lifting fringes and draws an absent-eyed meandering look across
its faded patterns as if they got some bleached fainting disease
from being walked on or a tissue of boiled milk
plopped up up from a hot pool
and breaking through greasy clay goes poof!
and milk slithers lasciviously over the rim and splutters
onto the element where it sizzles and burns
and sends up black smoke tendrils
as if Jack and the Beanstalk went black and white
instead of growing green up into the sky from scarlet runner beans
Jack climbs to the giant's castle and you are Jack and you
steal the goose that lays the golden egg...

this pick'n'mix of purposes like licorice allsorts comes of having
differently-purposed activities happening in singly-purposed rooms -
though of course no room can be purely singular-minded -
and if minds may be singular their singleness
is never pure and often dangerously
put together like red and green wires in electric
appliances getting hooked up to the in
instead of the out channel...

or the out channel being blocked

Which is where this blog got to after the initial flurry

But now being purposed with leaving home for a small stay away
I have been clearing the decks

Bon voyage