Doubt, doublespeak, all things goulash - 8 may 2020

Washington Heights, NYC. May 2019. Source: Olimpia Mosteanu

I wouldn’t have walked these roads had I doubted the taste of goulash

sweet and spicy, dark red filled with memories of the heart and imagined ones

running on folk and hip-hop, always finding a rhyme to unsettle them

had I doubted all can be imagined again: reshuffle, combine, speak up

pretend you have already tasted, heard, seen it, let them touch your imagination

let them become part of your world; had I doubted it can be done and

have I done it? and the price for plunging and the state of the heart?

a staggering consumption of words or worlds? and beer, a proclivity

for the roller coaster as metaphor, a sensibility for instability, a desire to keep

finding or looking for? these roads, never doubting, I tell them I’ve learned the taste

in the heart then imagined it but that’d be a lie without doubt

I’ve made up expressways and blue highways, the small homes

to hide away these thoughts and the high rises to hear myself out at night

when all the roads have gone quiet and the sound’s come to a halt in the heart