Lascivious Loop

Hourglass Nebula


Lascivious Loop

When crumpled stock cars rumbled fast
around their figure-8 tracks, roaring like
wounded beasts in a coliseum, bellicose
crowds prayed for a collision at the
tiny vertex of the twin torus, lusting
for blood and crankcase oil on the
speeding axis, a meeting of steel
and lemniscus, but sadly no one noticed
the dreaded polyhedron with eight faces
lurking hooded much too near the
women’s toilet, nor did any of them seem
to appreciate that the ice cubes in their
grape Nascar sodas were comprised
of eight nearly perfect verticles, nor
did any of them care much that
the old shoe salesman gripped tightly
his glass bottle of classic Coca Cola,
imagining his left arm around the nearly
perfect, 38-24-36, waist of Mae West,
still vivid within the crags and catacombs
of his recall, nor was it significant
that a Pee Wee Herman clone stood
on a yellowYakima apple crate
adjacent to the blue gate, wearing red socks
and a polka dot bow tie, informing
twin towheaded five-year old boys
and their black Pug that it would behoove
them to note that the earliest image
of an hourglass appeared
on a fresco in 1338 in Italy, and the taller
of the two tykes said, “More importantly,
sir, one needs to remember that when
Magellan sailed into history in 1521, he
carried 18 hourglasses on each of his ships.”

“No shit?” asked the clone, but too late,
for the boys already were staring hard
at the black and white television on the
top shelf over the greasy snack bar,
broadcasting amid soap bubbles
this deep resonant message,
“Like sand through the hourglass,
so are the days of our lives.”

Needing to assert myself I approached
a beggar by the back fence just in time
to hear him whisper, “Some sand clocks
can also use powdered egg shells or
richly colored powdered marble.”

I needed to let him know, “8--the SI prefix
for 1000 to the eighth power is yotta.”

Smiling, raising his L.L. Bean ball cap,
he retorted, “The lemniscate is always
infinite, relooping our little lives as
frequently as the soul can tolerate,
or until we understand enough
about truth, about love.”

“Yes,” I said.

Glenn Buttkus September 2010

Posted as #64 over on Magpie Tales 32