The Great Whatever (Thoughts on a Thursday Night, Solo). @kwamealexander

T.G.W.

In a Ford Focus,

unfocused, but focused,

I sat waiting for a writer...

    ...this fighter with words

       mightier than any pen,

before he finally appeared.

"I was on a roll, man,"
he said, putting a bag in the trunk
and adjusting his glasses.
"It's all coming together."

"But the airport is an hour away."

"But I couldn't stop."
"But these highways, man."
"But the muses."

"I know. I know.
It's okay.
Minds like ours
get exhilarated by the flow...."

Hill Central crossing over, 

youth turning around, visions of the poetic,

Skills4Life, communities of unities,

Ubuntu, and a Rooster's barnyard blues

(Ah, Ella Finchgerald and Duck Ellington).

Whirlwind. Magic. Memory. Luck.

Acoustics. I am. We are.

"It's going all the way," I say,

listening lightly to local news, buried in thought. 

"New-Bery'd," I contemplated, a fledgling with such ideas.
Radio adjusted.

I hit the gas. We accelerated.

A flight to catch. The Connecticut traffic. This poet in my car.
Hooks in the ribcage pulling us forward.

"It's the Great Whatever, man. If we make it in time."

I say this a lot.
T.G.W. - The Great Whatever
(now a band)

because whatever comes next is up to the unknown.

Predictable unpredictability.

Unpredictable predictability. 

"What's that? This Great Whatever?"

Snap.
Questioned for the 1st time about such religion.
Philosophy. A way of making sense of the world.

I talk about AnE.Rip, my grandmother,

who taught me God and Mother Nature did the nasty, 

(squeaky bed noise inserted here)

and produced a fusion of sky and soil

resulting in Maude, the Earth.

That's what she believed (the stars bathing in her lake).

"The Great Whatever.
T.G.W.

It's who I talk to. 

My Maude.

My sense of the world,

Add an 'o' to God and we get 'good' - 

      I like to believe in good

      as much as I love to believe in hope," I explain

     (and thank Brendan Kennelly for that ol' trilogy).

"I love / to believe / in greatness.

The Great Whatever.  My belief."

"Do you mind if I use it?" I hear.

"That's up to the Great Whatever,"
I say, staring into traffic.

"I don't own anything, but a wandering eye

and whacky brain," I tell him
(maybe that's what was left in the dragonfly box by Pandora).

"It's yours," I offer. "Just shout out to me when the time is right."

Notebooks. Pens. He is writing again.
Doodling. Scribbling. Scripting.
And I drive, creeping forward one day at a time.

Hamden. Hartford. Bradley.

Silence. Lost in thought. Mesmerized by ideas.

I turn the news off -

change the station to jazz.

Improvisation...
impromptu, a performance
still being written)

(And I don't mind that I'm speeding. 

because I get bewildered by deadlines -

& he has to be delivered to a 3 p.m. flight).

His life is booked.

(one rebound after another)

frogs surfing through autographs.

celebrity. The Great Whatever doing its thing....
a Blade carving magic into the world...

providing music for storytellers and readers,

and flying lessons with prose...

The Great Whatever. 

Ah, who actually knows....