Mu’adib, or The Cyclist
by
Found in: Issue 4, Poetry
Published in January, 2022
Gaudi Ramone https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ciclonudista_Zaragoza_2011_002.jpg#Licensing

Falling on gravity, steel loves gravity, wheel loves
Air and pressure and wears its rhythm
Fearless. Bottom bracket, the grease
Must flow. Be careful and be brave, be visible.

Sing lycra, of the wanderers
Conditioned among the winds
And sands. The spinning click
And hisses of the rubber and the rock

There is rhythm, which comforts
(Let go of all, it will endanger)
Each encapsulation of the field
An atomic blast.

Segmentation
Into stages, wool and silk
Instead machine beating free
Buffeted on gusts of fear
Sliding on a pad of leaves

Caladan—gyroscope and wrenching
Between the jars of pendula
Navigation. Silence! In the face
Of lying sun. The path so water-fat

She paved the way. For me
In a language from the deep, sounding
Undertones for safety, pitched
Above my ken. How then,

Today’s falsehood tomorrow’s truth?
Silence, do not fear. She says
Aforetime he has done these things
Which stand as signs, such as

The blood. The pillars lasting
Or falling. The arrival at the mountain,
The ascent and the gentle coast
The enunciation of the words

Do not forget. It’s like riding
A bike. Collect 100,000
And find the authentic from the feel
And be what they suggest

A voice. Or, you will realize in time,
Ecology. Because you were made
Before, anxious, from a clot
By the dawn and by the nights

What we called bloodline, might be
Called just sequence. And that
Shall come again. Tanks of cells
Disfigure not.

So much for law.
So much for what prolongs and pre-
Cognizes. One guild guides, one knows
And one arbits and assassinates
And I (we?) claim to elevate

Beyond the animal. So you have been
In pain now long enough.
I respond behind blue eyes and say
The greening is at hand

So understand. Beyond the wall
Life and death of one sustain
A cycle more than cycling:
Poison nourishment. But I

Agonized. The way I was writ in
The future, determined in my nerves
From birth. The blade, slow
Goes through.

Spit.
Spit on wall, shield, and generation
Spit out where I was not bred for
I tasted and spat power. Nerve and muscle
Was the plan, but moisture

Is/was life. How we survive
The funeral plain. Where you,
Cousin, mother, mahdi, I
Break away. I ready hooks

To ride the machine in image
Of a living thing. Each top tube measured
The rule of road, the sharia
Where the pilot is also the engine and the fuel

Whose flames are not internal
Who spit respect and ride contempt
And I no longer the son of who I am
But a veiled and fighting prophet among masked men

They are free, but superstitious
You think they will assimilate?
I catalyze the sietch, ready to
Go critical. Mass the forces and chant

My name. A killing word.
Mu’adib. The cyclist.

Crossword: It’s Perfectly Unambiguous
by
A crossword by Nathaniel Sandalow Ash: "Subcontinental Sovereign." "Crepuscular Hamster Alternative." "Putz."
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by
and time! / like a breech-presented foal’s neck in the birth canal, / it telescopes, / a gentle snap, / to fall dead in the hay and mother’s foam. / “I am the dawn,” it says, / “be grateful. / Few things come so willingly at your call.”
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by
Decadence looks around, sees nothing but rotten fruit, and gathers it in sticky armfuls to distill into liqueur. It does this in an informedly fatalist manner, taking pride in its self-awareness but without the hope that such insight will provide any way forward.