The white faced aldermen
from the new school of Hellas
will shield your children
from strange tribes
of other children
with guns
that shoot knives.
They will make sure
you can sleep
like you're on vacation
with
chains of locked fingers
ringed around your neighbor's
throat.
They promise your freedom
is eternal
and your right to want,
and your right to have,
is immutable.
The dividend of peace
conjures bellicose daydreams
of omniscience.
A ribbon is being stretched
in your name
around a watchful bruin
through the fields
of its estranged satellites.
An old familiar knot
is gordian
and grimly forming.
I'm just trying
to find a narrow way
between the gold bubbles
and the technology rushes.
Just like
when I was a boy
and not yet medieval,
and not yet obsolete.
I walked from our home
to the fence by the freeway
looking for a small space
to squeeze past
and make my way
to the shoulder
where the narrowleaf cattail
swayed in the traffic's wake.
All I wanted
was a blossom from the stalk,
to hold,
to have for my own.
But to let anyone know
what I had gained
would reveal where I had been
and
shed the ever curious light
of authority
on meandering motives,
on wondered wanderings.
I never told a soul
until now.
I kept the blossom hid
just for me
in the child's shoebox
under the bedroom windowsill.
It never comes easy.
The world seems like
a panoply of distraction
and the pendulum clock
ever swings the minutes
away and gone.
Like that bullrush
the real doesn't
beg affirmation from
silicon ghosts.
It sits
outside of reach,
often overlooked
and waiting
for someone who can find
that slender path
through the fences
and the roar of traffic.
I'm searching.
I still
wander and wonder.
This time though,
I think I'll share
the soft caress
of the bullrush blossom
that sways patiently
in the forgotten median
while the world
dashes by.
It's your rules.
First of the month.
Come on in.
Kelly's on Third
is hoppin'
at 7:21 a.m.
The drunk checks
line up
to be cashed
by aborted
adults.
Outside,
the rosicrucian queen
does his best
Veronica Lake
and pulls
on a menthol
and pulls on
a filthy john
in garbage
rusted rags,
a captain's hat
and yellowed beard.
Just inside the door,
sunlight banished
the construction paper
cut outs dissolve
the pointless remainder
of themselves
in Old Milwaukee
and urine.
I am a spectator
safe behind transit glass
touring the lower intestine
of the jaundiced town.
The dead part of me
cinemascopes this corner
and in little ways
admires
this recklessness.
The lure of failure
is laced with renunciation
for this life,
for this country,
for love,
for money,
for possibility.
The lure of failure
promises wine and cakes
on cigarette butt streetcorners
at 6:30 a.m.
daily
until the lost vessel
slips under the wave.
