Heuristics
Allan Johnston
The way you got out is the way in
or in case you never got there
a key is hidden under the rug
by the trap door where the
alligators live
or perhaps you came here looking
for love
or invention or some social proof
of the need for these dangling
objects
that break the force fields of
respective trends.
Note the momentary correlation
of life with experience. Are you amused
by the wealth of death displayed
in the terminal dances of
mouseketeers?
Locus hic transit gloria mundi
(among other signs that Latin is
lost)
might serve to point us back to
each other
out of reach of the key, where the
doorbell gets answered.
[This poem was
first published in Weber Studies]
Allan Johnston lives in Chicago and teaches writing and literature at Columbia College and Depaul University. He has one book of poems out, Tasks of Survival (Mellen, 1995) and a chapbook forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. His works have appeared in over sixty journals, including Poetry, Poetry East, Rhino, Weber Studies, and previously in Tipton Poetry Journal. Among other awards he received a finalist fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and a Pushcart Prize nomination.