thus did he run

head bowed, heart alight, he would revisit the
Watts Aslan mashup before every run
...religion was the language of symbols and metaphors that
allows us to eff the ineffable...

~

17 runs in all
all seeded with a fresh randomized playlist, 36 songs long;
but each playlist anchored with that ONE song that
found purchase in the hollow of his throat

that place where love and time dueled
in Ram Dass's Ramayana;
gave birth to 7 universes that settled
up and down the chakras
in a holy interstate that started and stopped in god

~ thus did he run ~

each playlist a lifespan of its own, playing until it reached that one song where he would stop and
Garmin the GPS coordinates for the later overlay

And after the 17th run, the overlay was this:

a GPS’d holy word without letters;
point to point, pre-verbal and perfect;
stamped like a mantra behind the eyes,
ready to pass like a blessing to the secret artists and poets and lovers and dreamers
that nursed god back to health around the clock
and always had the roads ready for the next run.