MEDITATION UPON WAITING
I read somewhere that we
spend nearly a third of our
lives waiting in lines. This is
what I think about on Friday
afternoon, two dollars in my
wallet, clinching a withdraw
slip in my fist, thirty minutes
waiting in the bank with this old
man behind me reeking of piss.
I try to hold my breath, but the
line refuses to move and the old
man grins this impoverished dark
smile, so I look out the window
at a woman in pink nurse's scrubs
as she eases a wheelchair down porch
steps of the house across the street,
it's windows draped in black.
It is like The Moon in the Gutter
or Five Easy Pieces, moments
like these, anti-heroes in an
interminable line, waiting for
Godot or the time of day, existing
somewhere between piss and death,
struggling through our own apocalypse.
**********************************************
AN AMERICAN GHOST TOWN
Everywhere there are ghosts
with ghost teeth and ghost eyes
ghost hands steering their ghost
cars along the ghost highways,
listening to their ghost radios.
Ghost businessmen and ghost
cops Ghost teachers.
Ghost politicians smiling
their ghost smiles from ghost
billboards making ghost promises
And the thing about ghosts is that
they hate the living
they pump their ghost drugs into
their own children to turn them into
ghosts like them.
And because I was alive and didn't
want to be a ghost they sent their
ghost riders to my house
They crucified me with long ghost nails
and as I hung there from that sad ghost
tree I spit at the one ghost rider, " Hey,
motherfucker-- do your best, because
I don't forgive shit!"
And the bald-headed ghost looked at me
and said,
" Boy, how come you're so angry?"
"I'm angry because I'm angry.
I'm angry because I'm alive because
of this deep dark type B positive
Mediterranean blood raging through
my veins the blood of my ancestors
who wandered like a caravan of
wounded gypsies through the
ghost towns of Europe looking for
a home, finally ending up here
only to discover that this was
just another ghost town."
And I looked into his ghost eyes
and came to realize that every town
in America is a ghost town
everything transparent -- look right
through and see how vast this
wasteland.
**********************************************
A CHILD'S STORY
In this tale, there are
no teddy bears or
floppy-eared bunnies
no Santa Claus with toys
wrapped in silver and green
paper -- but maybe a
mouse running up the
midnight clock, a cockroach
crawling across the kitchen floor
or a pair of diseased hands
on a stranger .
Surely, there'd be a full
moon with its light reflected
on the blade of a shaving
razor and the limbs of trees
weeping their shadows on
the walls, phantoms moving
in grainy waves like silent
films of the 1920's.
Long fingernails, sharp
as spurs digging into flesh
riding you to the edge of
yourself -- some desert
wasteland nowhere.
Here be dragons, little one,
strange fire in the sky, and
cigarette butts next to tire
tracks of a '67 Chevy Impala
ground by the dusty boot
of a man with no name as
he fills the earth with your
bones.
**********************************************
AT THE EDGES OF AFTERNOONS
Sometimes, don't you just
want to exist in the middle
of a conversation?
to walk through a
shopping mall in the
middle of the day
watch the people
parade along with
their lovers
their families
their friends
filling in their
stories:
you see two people
walking along side-by-side
trying hard not to look
at one other and failing
at the corners
of their eyes.
Sally and Jimmy.
And Sally's cheating
on Jimmy with his
brother Billy-Bob
who's ex-girlfriend's
daughter Jenny
is being molested
by her step-father
Roy.
We are all these
tiny countries
existing at the edges
of one another
not quite touching
engulfed by this
strange sea.
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