the mixers and dumpers and flatteners
cursing and groaning a cacophany
of ill-gotten sounds playing across
the summertime heavy
air.
a bird stands still
on the fresh cut grass of this afternoon,
amid a whirlwind of cement
thin lines of dried mowed grass
chalking his twig
legs as he
hops.
just trying to find a god damn
worm
or a little
twig
for the
nest.
cheque, please
as the red wine stews
speckled with floating cork bits
twirling a bit with a slouched rhythm like lost sailors
as you pull
pull at tobacco
as you bite the lip
you try and juice the dry shell of dust,
try and whisper music at the treachery
of yet another abandoned evening,
the pale afterbirth of another
mutilated afternoon-
it was a day of celebration, though.
graduation.
yesterday the absurd meat parade stunk up the stage
pictures flashed
and today the buffet
with its subtle tyranny,
the little wisps of old ladies
grinning in a back room
counting the dollar bills,
while the men and women,
the endless procession,
sliding their plates along the stainless steel,
portioning out one ration of each,
lemon chicken,
pork fried
rice, oo what’s
that?
onion rings for
the tame,
sushi for the eccentric,
the children following along on
straightened leg, learning,
doing the same.
what a joke.
and I’d laugh,
but I’d choke.
I’d cry
but I wouldn’t
stop,
I’d dance,
but I hear no
music.
the movement of the lost,
the malcontent,
the weary and broken souls,
the supposed saviors of
an obese or swollen-bellied
humanity,
jabbing each other
in the back with steaming white
plates for the last
of the chicken
balls.
cheque,
please.
_
a peculiar way...
rain coming down
with intent,
swaths of it
hellbent and studied
on the art of the
fall
and the dry grass
didn’t know why
but smiled
anyway
and the birds
and the worms
and the nourished
and the famished
and the bleak
and confused
and dizzy
and depressed
were
grateful
too
maybe some just
had
a peculiar way
of showing
it.
-
(...and stirring in a dollop of prose...)
the most heartbreaking of images I carry with me is the sight of tourists poking about in antique or novelty shops checking each empty box for content, but, finding it empty, become increasingly more disappointed moving
from box to box, sometimes leaving the lid half-off to save trouble for their fellows, who inevitably check the box anyway. saw this sort of thing a lot when traveling down south... especially true of travelers who can afford to
spend money frivolously. oddly, that experience is simply a loosely patched together series of moments of suffering and tragedy in other cultures. there was the fried haggard young man in Jamaica who requested a plate of barbequed chicken (smoking on the barbecue mere meters from the shops, all to accommodate the tourists
and exclusively this pack of raving animals alone), in exchange for some canvases- got three canvas, on my wall, in exchange for all the fucking chicken the painter and his hangers-on could eat. not great works, but fragment the dam
of reminiscence and bring on a flood of joy in a bed, a sea of suffering, the grass blowing heavily in the wind, eyes blood coloured more numerous than toes.