READING MR FAIRCHILD
“these parallel universes of paradox”
B. H. Fairchild, THE BARBER
suddenly you see,
hear something unlike
what you have
encountered before
bump your nose into
Einstein relativity, begin
to look
at yourself in a somewhat
different light, a geared down
slightly more shaded
and reserved perspective
I suppose poets and prizefighters
have that in common
look at iron Mike how
quickly he became philosophical,
smoothed into
spiritual once he had lost
chaos fundi
knowing how
(from
happy and
from bitter experience)
how quickly a punch
strips
a voice
wrecks a plan
rope
a dope, butterfly float
all this snake talk rattle-snaking
my inner
diamond back
who knows how before the
walls of Rome you might have to
risk
fatal adjustment of strategy
for which
no one of your kind
left
surviving to
elevate you high in their
great epics, huge
mythologies