A Prayer to St. Wallace

I know you old man. And what I wonder is how you wondered without a keyboard at your fingertips.

I live my life in backspaces.

How did you touch that place with the permanent STAMP! of metal machine? The printing press? The die-cast word on ink-ribbon?

In here I've made a dozen edits already. Two dozen. More. I spelled it Mpre twice, three times in three seconds.

More!

More!

More!

I know you old man because you are in my mind (but not in me, though that is what I wrote in the original, which was never the original).

But I have seen your black bird.

And I have considered the slovenly wilderness of Tennessee.

And yet, and still. You must have been a different operator. The heart must have moved in different rhythms. You must have sung in separate songs than those that my heart sings in foggéd haze of too little sleep and too little time and too little love in words for those I love or actions in love for those I love.

With pencil lead. With fountain pen. The mark indelible. The eraser leaves a canyon and crumbles. It makes heat on the paper. Yet in two swift stokes this disappears.

ctrl-a del

And my soul would move only. And not yours.

To do this is felt beneath the sternum. One can feel it. Is it as easy in your sleep, too?

But you are dead but still live and have lived then more than I live now or will.

Or perhaps not will.