“These are my honours of descent: I have no others: and I have thanked God sincerely that I have not, because, in my judgment, a station which raises a man too eminently above the level of his fellow-creatures is not the most favourable to moral, or to intellectual qualities.” Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
“Everyone was very happy, overwhelmingly certain that the world was a good place and we a notable set of people.” George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
This bridge (if bridge it is) is where certainty –
(If moral, folly’s birthplace) – can congregate.
Fatigue’s the enemy of manners,
Stomping on history’s metatarsals
As Old Town Chinatown’s hope, viz. amnesia’s
Midwife, arrives with Ixchel, her figurine.
Lloyd District stands by like a suffix.
In the Rose Quarter, Kol Nidre stumbles.
With pinpoint pupils, summer’s eudaemonist
Makes limoncello out of our suffering.
This double-decker has two meanings:
One is a language of stems and endings;
The other’s ripe and good in the evening.
The Oregonian called it God’s limerick.
Thus waylaid, the Willamette River
Turned to reality’s funny pages.