Broken Like a Word

Powhaten went to Manhattan to see what he could see
Yellow a New York color on taxis in the air
An ocean at the corner behind the bus waiting there
We'll throw everything in and then see what comes back and where
A broken word is not a syllable , not a sound nor an utterance
It is the light we live by it is the air we breathe

In Detroit there is a story about a river , a lion and a tree
But all that's left is made of iron , concrete and some nails
And so the story is never told is never heard but only dreamed
I have often tried to recall it but my thoughts are choked with steel


Once I went to Chicago and stood there in the sun
There were no cattlecars no stockyards no fire nor any wind
I heard some music howling up from the plantations way down south
The words were all rough and shattered torn and twisted
Blue like the city like anybody's sky
All the words were broken out of some farmer's country home
The hired hands all running to the city far away
To the railheads, killing floors upton's jungle town
You can sing all you want but the asphalt stays the same
Blue is a color like black or any other
You can see as you drive you can hear it anywhere
You can feel it like a flame on Sunday afternoon

Yellow and green is the corn for miles and miles
Like some lonesome highway moan
They raise it for hogs for bacon on the plate
They wouldn't think to paint with it
Nor nail it to a cross no not even to fill their homes with color
Yellow as any other
Mile after mile in Nebraska Iowa all the Indian lives are there
In the green and yellow fields
And you know yellow is the color of your true love's hair
Never black and long plaited in the evening air
The windmill brought the plow brought the money from back east
And little towns with big names no English tongues can say
Were planted in their thousands along the way
The land's still black but for how long ?
Seeds in silos waiting like souls of long ago
You forgot if you ever knew where the seeds or souls were from

In San Francisco a man awakes the sounds of railroad gangs
Echo in his brain though the suit in his closet the car in the street
Pull him back
They say his skin is yellow what if it were?
He never sailed from Shanghai never laid the steel rails
His thoughts have no color not red nor blue yet the yellow haze lingers
Like the morning fog that is still there in the afternoon
When he hails a cab going east
And up the road another ocean yellow in the evening light
Three ships are leaving with the tide
Never to return

     
Car

I have a car reddish brown in color
Three payments behind
The avuncular loan officer said
Could I drop by tomorrow
Before the weekend
Such a smooth voice
Probably 23 years old
Prematurely wasted
in service of GM
I was reading Drummond today the book published
In 1881 when Henry Ford was an anti-Semitic gleam in
His father's eye or maybe he was young not gray haired
Like in photos of him and Edison so well fed
And they're probably driving over Buddha's bones
Scaring the monsoons away
I'd hate to tell the man what I thought of GM
And the three months like maybe I'll be there
Bright and early to see him in his suit
Looking like a child at play with the tools of his elders
Maybe he went to college, business school
Or something you want your kid to do
I can't help thinking of poor Guatama
Bouncing in his grave
Maybe he has the $263
For the kid in the tie
Or maybe
Some time to talk
To a man without
A car

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