In September I Asked Myself

In September I asked myself
to make a list of frequently asked questions
hoping that the gentleness, the simplicity
of the question would summon the little people
who live in the temporal and occipital
lobes, to come out from the little corners
where they had been hiding
and play games with me, whisper secrets
to each other, carry on one-sided conversations
and come up with lists of questions in the dark.

Why I had such confidence
in this list of questions, or what I expected
to learn from it, I can't tell you.
All the purportedly frequently
asked questions available, from
any given call center or superficially intelligent
chatbot, are never to the point,
not at all what you'd like to ask, and never sufficient
for getting you anywhere,
but appear like Abbates "Cold furious angel
popping up everywhere with fistfuls
of answers to all the wrong questions."
But if I was coasting
if I was losing touch, overly formed
and no longer forming,
surely the little people would have
some barometer on the situation
some idea, some unspoken questions,
if not batted around between them,
at least gestating quietly in their
softly burbling tummies.

But alas, the little people stayed
quiet, they neither asked nor answered
queries of any sort, neither did they
run out to play any games
on the intricate wrinkles of their
little world, neither did they speak
at least not that I could hear, but
instead swaddled their heads with
bandages, and held very still
in their little hovels along the highways of the mind

for I had submerged their little worlds in the
lower reaches of my brain, too recently
and too often, and turned their little villages
into bayou, for I had gone down to New Orleans
and swam nearly forty nights, and more than
forty days like a little fish from Decatur street
to Frenchman, to Calypso. And I had slept,
too many nights in the arms of Methe, and too few
in the arms of Astraea and Sophrosyne. And
overtime the little people boarded up their shops
unplugged their telephones, bandaged up their ears
and mouths, and settled down like pond frogs
in December, neither willing nor unwilling
to be submerged.