I, in myself, am a Universe of Doors

[a poem of Hamletian Herculean Hesitation, for Gregory, Lakeisha, and frightened fiancees everywhere]

12/22/23, by Mark Nielsen

I, in myself,
and beyond my skin,
am a thin place,
a diamantic frantic liminal space.

***
I pass from this universe
into the next 1000,
simultaneously
in any and all directions:
East, West,
up,
plutonian, Dionysian,
dark rye direction,
and the rum-raisin gun-totin’ gut-wrenchin’
down the drain direction,
while passing alongside the 219th Fermented Parallel
heading toward the Godhead
(next exit past Goshen,
Exit Number x+y² = emcee).

We walk it, generally,
Albert and I.
Letter by letter,
pill by leaf by forest by
elephant queef.
Our pachydermititus occasionally flares up,
but we walk on,
me
and Albert the Indian Elephant.
(Oh, …you thought that *I*
get pachydermititus?!
No. It’s Albert.
I’m a smooth criminal.)

When we read the map–
erasing it as we go–
we take a finely sharpened ✏️ and wit.
I punch through
Egyptian papyrus,
to write upon
the British Parliament
funkadelic parchment
Big Sur Walter Raleigh
map beneath,
without even seeing
what I’ve written
on the second sheath.

(Never let the idle hand know,
what the writing hand has written.
Idle hands are the devil’s Phillips screwdrivers.
Left Hand of God, Jr.
will only come unscrewed, unglued,
tell the secret too soon.
Then the mobs
will be hot
on our trail,
rollin’ and tumblin’
so that we fail
to get Universe 3.14.54 Grampa Gamma,
where I am to be married.
Y’all are invited,
if’n you can find it.)

Sometimes we–
Albert and me–
take the 🐈, da cool cat,
Rio
de Febrero,
who
sits atop Albert
upon my lap,
but she
does not like the extreme
heat of that jungle, and the way
rea
lity, ………tends to wig gle, and giggle and buc kle
and ↘️↪️➡️
↩️
then go all liquidy,
as time ooooozes
like a Dali clock🫠.
When
she passes from this universe
to ♐️
the next one over, 57° eastwestward,
she often coughs up a hairstar.
For that is the world
where she is not in the catbird seat anymore,
but is the huntress falcon,
unable to resist swooo
oooo
ooooping down with lightning speed,
to break the neck of small kittens,
and hungrily tear their flesh to eat.

(You can understand. We all eat our own, from time to time. But only the rare breed savors it. Yet Rio de Febrero does not have the stomach for it.)

When we arrive at Gamma Grampa or
Lazy Sunrise (Playmate Galaxy of the Eon, back in
1492, before
her tits started to
sag),
we say a prayer of gratitude
for safe travels.

Albert usually deposits me at

☄️George Bailey’s comet depot,
as long as we are on time
to catch my next ride onward———->
(to the ghetto across the tracks, of course,

where Mary Lou
is waiting in her wedding dress,
womb still waiting at the altar–
at the makeshift altar
made of frozen imported pomegranate juice,
…and melting fast).

Mary Loom gets so testy when I am late
(and I am always late,
having stopped, usually,
on the porch outside the depot
to sing a 3-hour song
with Sister Marietta Tharp and the Flanneries —
her band of Expensive Communion Winos.
They’re always there,
always waiting for the
midnight train to Georgia–
which hasn’t been through that station
since the Bronze Age of Earth.
But still,
they happily jam away
and patiently wait.)

Should I get married ?
should I be good ?
desiring this man’s tact
and that man’s scope and wood?
should I have hope?
that the marriage will last
and I’ll this time escape
the hangman’s rope?

This is what I contemplate,
as I gleefully ride
Sister Marietta’s
thumping thumb bass, so great,
into the second hour of song
on the Train in Vain platform.
Am I wrong…
to hesitate?

Every eon, I await
the veritable vertical
transitory
Tower of Power,
of the Last Train to Clarksville,
arriving every hour.
I need to find a universe
where the centre can still hold,
and I never get old.

The door to leave is always open.

I never and always leave.
I tap out the rhythm and rhyme
on
a few collectible Taylor Swift(™)
plastic popcorn buckets,
arranged

like a simple Ringo kit
(no splash required for a two-step dance tune
with a simple backbeat,
though I do use
a coffee can lid
as a symbolic cymbal,
plus an actual cowbell
para ritmo cumbia).
[Back off, vaca! Esta campana
es mía,
de… de… de…
de mi tío
Ruben La Cuchilla ! ]

Should I dance with Mary?….
Lou, …
marry Lou?
Make merry? Miss Mary Mack the Knife?
“Hello, Mary Lou. Goodbye heart.”
Merrily we roll along,
grab a treble,
go looking for trouble.

Should I stay or should I go?
I was a free man in Paris.

“I stand at the door and knock.”
I hear Their footfall behind the door,
approaching.
Soon I will know.

***

by Mark Sebastian Nielsen
Friday December 22, 12:39pm CST*

*in Bartlett, IL, USA, North America, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Sol, Milky Way