In school I was always in trouble for writing sideways.

The slant of my slant ~ a different way of seeing, of being.

Never quite straight but skewed, the way the roads around

Paris do not follow any grid but simply go and vroommm, you

Are off. Is not then my pen the same way?

Taking anyone who reads from the x. to the y.

The calculus of my brain, these thoughts, this happiness, this pain.

I am not a train on a rail, directed and fast.

Rather, a slow meander through narrow roads

Where everything leads to nothing and everything

At once. Does this writer’s bump not prove all those

Years then of wondering: I am my own foot-happy

Traveler showing everyone the way.

The Pied Piper of epilepsy.

The Pied Piper of today.

09/22/05 , Les Deux Magots, Paris , France