Rodney Koeneke – A History of my BART Ticket

Rodney Koeneke

A History of my BART Ticket

Embarcadero In the dream of suits Jack Spicer pleads for magic            with a Tarot card (try Dangling Man or Fool)       taped to his ass. Rainbow in Cup, or brandy              or blood call it Words to Jam These Signals          call it White Rabbit in                 Snowstorm call it failure call it Grail. Powell Street I have no propositions. Only Magick            & Tarot cards The word spoke at Creation            is written between the lines                        in invisible ink, in space                        we don’t know how                        to find. A ghost is the idea of space a quiet assertion              of existence like shivers,              like your breath. Angels and demons work the same way: breath on glass,             blessing or curse. Magic is indifferent to heaven as it is to spilled salt, mirrors and words:              Abracadabra.                     Arise and walk.                          Be gone. Civic Center The lines of force caked over with buildings, words—              At the gold dome (Willie’s)              some                         light gets through The pigs of Gerasa are a dream of order. Some people would run              with the pigs. This was the trouble with the 20th century. Hitler. Cancer. Hard-                    wired for order,                          can’t take it any                                               other                                                    way. Mission & 16th You speak to me of chemotherapy             as if it were a whore you just woke up with and realized             there’s not any money to pay and she’s gone and taken your keys & a bite from your doughnuts, & hair. Mission & 24th I still think about dis- ease. How little it’s known, how ill-              equipped we might have thought that suffering’s             a law             but it’s a star                         inside ourselves             so deep             so cool                                     it burns. Colma I think about death with the flag at ½ mast twenty-              four hours a day over the neat white rows of soldiers’                          graves. Does anyone die for ideas?              Did they? They’ve found their dream of order here. We scoff at abstractions                         but laugh             at incarnation. No magic       but in things—                         a ghost exhausted                         into skin A knock at the heart A push on the lids                 of white graves.

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