Untravels

by Peter Milne Greiner

Remember that omens are only events,
aren’t real, are only movies, Jake, who is a man

I don’t know well, a man who comes here once
a month, told me, And that, he continued,

if you really are an empath like you claim,
your imaginary orb of protection will make

you look one environmental pressure older
than the dawn of time

I have what I call my no-term memory set to
excerpt little bits of reality from his intermittent

advice and intermittent name and presence
Is this man’s name Jake

The first echo is almost the original
and it also something new

On my face: trace evidence of every elision and
every slightly known man in my life’s inner completionist

His cordial disturbances are like friends through which I might
obtain the Absolute’s contact info

I ask him to interpret a very coherent dream I have sometimes
about a painter who is on the verge of becoming significant

but only to me; in reality the painter is already significant
to everyone else

Whose head isn’t this stuff over, Jake asks, Who hasn’t been
standing on this corner for fourteen minutes or fourteen decades

admitting to themselves that they don’t know how chords work,
how words work, but that they do know a little about intervals,

specifically the interval of I know
Nuance in music is nucleotidal in scope

In Atlantropa the artifact farms boom
In your next few future lives you are baron after baron after baron

of things quickly obsolete, he says
I will never see you again in the present

I will see you the next time it is not March, but April
Who is Nicole Eisenman, I ask,

but he is gone again

 

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About the Author:

Peter Milne Greiner is the author of the chapbook Executive Producer Chris Carter (The Operating System 2014). His poems, science fiction, and other writings have appeared in Fence, Omni Reboot, H_NGM_N, Diner Journal, InDigest, Coldfront, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.