A Transformation

A Transformation Much Desired
---- Big Frank Dickinson

"The unobtainable object of desire becomes truly undesirable when in point of fact it is truly unobtainable."
---- Anonymous

Go board a train to Kazakhstan,
Leave no forwarding address.
And when you get there put your identity
Up for auction at the local bazaar
To be purchased by the highest bidder
And taken far away by caravans of camels
To an oasis desert-swallowed,
Where traders come from distant isles
To barter for your name, then pack it up
And sail away to distant Singapore
En route kidnapped by individual pirates
Who sell your by-now nameless name
To an alchemist banshee tribe that somehow
Manages to extract the letters from the echos that remain,
Each one of which is condensed through magic old
Into a kind of prayer that's offered up in
Words forever folded in the jungle mist which
Spreads out and then sun-baked rises
High into the air crossing continents
Carried back utterly transformed;
Then rains down at long last obtainably
Unobtainable and truly undesired.