With a bottle of Belgian beer,
I stand among pigeon feathers
and a choir of darkening leaves,
the murky Landwerkanal
traveling under my feet, choppy
ripples painted with amber
horns and a blotch of floating swan.
I watch it pass into the mists. I watch
the clouds devour a Ferris wheel
and a flying purple goose.
I watch the remaining
fragments of sun fade as night
comes and places a shadow
on me. I am not supposed to be
here. Something happened.
I am standing on the wrong
continent. I have strayed into
the wrong myth. Yet here I am,
half-drunk, heart torn by
butterflies and maenads,
by the glittering pallet knife
of some mad expressionist painter.
In a word, by love. I sit listening
to carnival music being
carried over the waters.
M.P. POWERS lives with one foot in Berlin, Germany, and the other in South Florida, where he rents out construction equipment. He has been published recently in Red Fez, Chiron Review, Slipstream, Neuro Logical, and others. His blog can be found here: https://mppowers.wordpress.com/
