On Visiting the Barber

Been thinking about doing this a
while now; the equinox was yesterday:
Helios and Kriós syzygy'd full Artemis
and Zeus in Zygós. And up-road

a white pole spins a blood spiral
down in the new sun toward a hall
of clicking blades' door. Inside,
an old man sweeps spent hair

from the floor as his proteges
spin unshorn men about the
axes of spiral chairs suspended in
air that is still, but for hair's falling.

Day and night have become equal
again, and the time has come to begin
again, as the sun begins, as the moon is full,
as the tide is strong - as the ram runs on.

I put my head into a cloud of spinning blades;
in seconds, the floor is covered in my years:
keratin that could have been blood. How many
meals, most of them had in another city

with far friends, in places that are now
fragments of my imagination – strands of hair
the old man now sweeps into a void of which
I know nothing?