The Exhibit By Jonathan Berman 5/7/2013

They walk by the exhibit, never traversing the mile but ever ready with a distant smile, a word or salve, confident in their ways, but never getting too close to the glass, never stepping beyond the test... only seeing reflections, sharing recipes for cleanliness and friendly deceptions, pretty pictures, sounds... entertainments and shadowed gowns, the sacred garden, the sweltering heat, melting glue, ravaged in doubt... children are music, notes corralled in these sterile exhibits... birds sing in the semi-permeable, and shadows glean from beyond the horizon lie... until suffocated by time and education, we find it. A wordless tome, a soundless chant, a roaming dream that can't wake or sleep... all this, still, and yet, stirring, blurring, churning out new solutions for puzzles yet to be born... and me here, in my exhibit, I knew this was coming, perhaps I yearned for it in some casual, causal way... formed it in delicate and subtle reflections... tiny causes with their Raison d'être, so many seasons with their treasons, bright and unfettered by the dawn, predicted, awaiting the shift and then gone, every ache scrapes the floor, shattered dancers, dance no more. So I turn the key and slowly lock the door. Windows wide I throw me under, devil's hide while angel's plunder. Virgil has left me, sled and all, golden ticket in hand, and you informing the chocolate isn't chocolate at all. Insanity sounds the alarm, a lovely key of A major... and while I hum the tune in slip, you walk by the exhibit, looking for a q-tip.