audience of one

A Performance By Odyssey Works

By the day of abduction just after

dinner, the husk of my hammock dangling

light on the chain, deft guiding hands of my

captors like mindful tugs at the water

line easing me out to sea, my debris

field had been mapped, loose marbles counted,

an audience of one in a full house

of actors who held all the cards and dealt

dizzying hands from the bottom of the

deck to unmoor line from cleat and set me

drifting, discombobulation mind you

the destination, like a whirl on the

Salt and Pepper Shaker or a wizened

mushroom popped on a pueblo scattered

across the flat plateau of a mesa

much like this one where I perch past sundown

to await the arrival of broadcast

stars across the rich black bottom land of

heaven and the next big surprise in this  

composition, the book I’ve been reading

surreptitiously replaced perhaps with

a copy in which the vowels gradually

disappear with each succeeding page or

dinner and drinks in some out of the way

place with my long dead father, our waiter,

the barman, everyone in the joint

in on the fix, each and every detail

down to the hand tooled cowboy boots of my

dining companion perfect, even the

sad shade I detect in his twinkling eyes.