Old People In Boston

I love those 50-60 year old guys
not yet quite adjusted
to the urban revolution
because they ride the subway
like it’s a fucking war.

They’re always harnessed in
to their new Northface jacket
with the face protection helmet hood,
a hiking backpack
and hiking boots,
waiting anxiously
at the wrong stop
on the wrong side of the street
thirty minutes early.
They sprint to the bus when it comes
maiming children on the way
as if they might have to get on
in a small window of time
while the wheels are still moving.

Once they’re on
they bounce from wall to wall
like they’re on a teetering ship
and the waves are crashing in.
They latch desperately
on to the poles
for dear salvation
pulling themselves to the back
as if there’s a 100 mph wind
fighting against them,
their body struggling,
their soles clawing up the isle
one thump at a time,
chest hunched over
nearing horizontal
with a grimace on their face
like they’re climbing up Everest
and the snow’s picking up,
power washing their eyes.
And the bus driver turns around smugly
and says, “Sir, this bus ain’t leavin’
’til you pay yo’ dolla’ seventy-five!”

Slipping

I see Segways
they look like old fashioned lawnmowers
balancing on their wheels
cutting down our shins
and spitting the clippings on our heels.
The stain from the clippings doesn’t wash away.
Who am I with no earth beneath my sock?
I can build a gyroscope
but im forgetting how to walk

I’m slipping

There’s a button for my food
I peck at it with my finger until I’m fed,
a switch for me to wake up
clap on, clap off with my head.
I sleep in a bed so monstrous
it looks like a ceremonial burial
a tall raft on fire,
and a Robo paddle to carry me.
I’m weaving through traffic
floating down a stream
sleeping through the harvest
of my dizzy monstrous dream.

I’m slipping

I’m just banking on the future
my friend the scientist is so clever
pretty soon I’ll have a lever
that will put me under forever
and I can dream away sloppily
drool shining down my smile
hopping along like hands in Monopoly
happier than a fat child.
On second thought it might get tough
coming up with dreams the whole day through
I’ll just wait long enough
until they’ve got a tube for that too.

I Am The Camera Man

I envy the people that will live 10,000 years from now
because technology is so new.
They will have the opportunity to see live footage
of ancient scenes
millenniums old
trapped in their original form
still breathing
still fresh

But me
little old me
all i can do is imagine.
I Fumble through the books i read
each one with a unique take
on the same topic
like goddamn film critics
and like a senile man with Parkinson’s and Jenga blocks
i try to piece together the past.
i try to believe the things i’m told

I envy the people that will live 10,000 years from now
because I would like to plunge into my couch and travel
and float away
and age
more than a lifetime
and see those people
who died so long ago
their bones have soaked
back into the soil
and all that’s left is a myth
and see the lands
so new they’re not yet called earth
not the earth we know

and i would cry
watching Mozart compose in real time
his little hands like humming birds
flashing over the keys
mesmerizing the piano
his open eyes
no sign of effort
an understanding
that we don’t understand

a proud laugh combusts
as Lincoln bows his head
the sun in a solar system of men
huddled around him
he drops a quick and steady bomb
the Gettysburg Address
in 3 minutes finished
in 3 minutes the world shifted
spoken for first time
to see the moods erupt in his face
his eyebrows like caterpillars
slow and restless
the wrinkles compress in his forehead
eyes stormy and transforming
complementing the trills of his voice
connected to each point
purposeful
as it passes
the speech: five copies of words
the moment: disintegrated

I envy the people that will live 10,000 years from now
because they will not have to surmise.
When they’re fathers or teachers tell them about Beatles
they won’t have to wonder what their performances looked like
they’ll have a copy
of every last dying note
saved in time
the four London composers
from 10, 000 years ago
the four wheels
the moving vehicle
their funny black hair – cut to the same length above their eyes, shifting
their uniforms – matching and military and button up wool
their smiles – uncontrollable
tears on the lips of the girls
agony in the stands
the cry of rock and roll
louder than the band

The future will not have to guess what 2010 looked like:
a confused civilization
caught halfway
between nature and plastic
authenticity and smut
color and emptiness
suicide and remorse
generosity and greed
they will have our files
by the millions
YouTube
documentaries and Hollywood
and they will look on in awe
because they will be able to see us
in a way that we never could
dangling from an off-green autumn tree
our toes touching just enough to breath
suspended
stuck
somewhere between
rotting and growing

the world has a way of balancing itself out though.
the way things are moving
we are losing our humanness,
a little more missing each year,
sucked up into a reel
preserved in time
so that by the year 12,000
when even the fucking sky is made out of steel
and nuts and bolts, and right angles
and marginal revenue profits
and smoke and headaches,
and the sun stuffy and burning
there will be no need to create.
that will be the Truth.
there will be no need to film.
there will be nothing left to capture.

but we will be compensated
with our universe of precious glimpses
unabridged and complete
a volume of memories
spinning fiercely
sweet nostalgia wicking off the side
seven oceans storming and swaying with the past
smiling back
shot in the face
the winds carried by a narrative
rushing through our eyelids
shimmering
shuttering
spools humming
unraveling
shadows pouring
sparks burning the skin
turning into stars
light beginning again
our eyes will not blink anymore
and in this way we will hold on
hold on to the days
we imagined
believed
surmised
guessed
fumbled
lived

like a moment hanging inside a camera
we will remain

The Distant Drumming Of Spring

At the thud of every winter the young lover
begins watching the old man on the farm
because years ago he discovered
a curious yearly alarm.
As soil becomes solid
the heart turns to stone
so the last of the shovel’s falling
is the first of the annual moan.
The pounding of the spade
cannot fight its wintry rest,
so dies the pounding
in the hopeful lover’s chest.

The water in the farmer’s streams
freezes over the mud
like the quiet drag and murmur
of the sleeping boy’s trickling blood.
The plants that once daily sipped
from the water holes on the farm
are as dead as the boys lips
drained of their wit, color and charm.
He wakes covered in wool
and looks to his window strangely
but with his neighbors fields under blankets of snow
he knows the tundra has no mood for changing.

March visits them with one sunny day.
The farmer taps around his roots and trees.
The lover claps off his shoes
though they both know it’s a tease.
Somewhere locked away
in the center of the earth
their hearts are beating softly
waiting for their yearly birth
and like the old man with his shovel
and the boy fidgeting an empty ring
all quiet hearts are waiting
for the distant drumming of spring.

Louie

Louie didn’t think him self a strange man.
He would grab his marker with a fist,
pound the back with a hammer,
like any other nail,
deeper and deeper
into the paper.

He didn’t think himself deranged.
At night he’d curl up under the rug.
Like a forgotten smell.
He liked the sand against his ear,
his thin hair stuck in the cracks of the hard wood.
He dreamed away warmly,
the floor breathing.

No one said much to Louie.
He used to wait in the break down lane
of the boulevard
closest to the local emergency room
where the ambulances went crying by
and stand
giggling,
with his arm extended,
his thumb up,
hitchhiking.

Louie was no crazy person.
He had women over all the time!
And he’d show them how good he was
at hanging his pictures inside out,
running as fast as he possibly could
into the canvas on his walls,
battle scream,
arms flailing,
precise.
The painted paper face replaced by his own,
a proud showman’s grin,
and a new frame hat
for a night on the town.

On Tuesdays you didn’t talk to Louie.
He was very serious.
He wasn’t “fuck-ing around”, he’d say.
He would suit up
with his tall black grenadier hat
zip up his gray wet suit
and tie a fifty foot string
of empty soda cans to the wagon
attached to the back of the lawn mower
that he drove
standing
into market square.
He looked like a giant microphone
wobbling down the street
swiveling around
being sure no one stepped on the chord
and destroyed grocery day.

Yes Louie, do you remember Louie?
He used to glue his palms together
and go see the preacher
like a praying mantis
and tell him he had a problem
that God couldn’t fix.
He’d beat his high score
in Tetris,
fill up a bottle of Gatorade
and dump it on his neck.
Whatever happened to that guy?
He was in shape man.
He used to run suicides up his roof
and use his gutters as balance beams.
He’d put his glasses on,
spray his whole face with Windex,
wipe it off singing, “I can see clearly now the rain is gone”.

I guess they found him last winter
at the top of a tree.
He had those orange road cones
over his head hands and feet,
and he had a piece of paper
taped to his chest that read,
“I am 5 flavors of ice cream:
taste, touch, sight, sound and smell.
I’m going where I can never melt”.

You know he kinda looked like a giant star though,
up there at the top of that pine.
We never talked to him once
but these streets have been awfully quiet
without him dancing between the yellow lines.

In Front Of A Smoking Train

I ran up the steeple and smashed through the window,
I splashed into the sky like a high flying crescendo
my heart it barked, I whistled down, the sky sizzled as if branded
I heard the sound of a cars spark and it caught me before I landed
the driver turned around Bud red in the face laughing he roared
with one smoking hand on the wheel and sideways boot on the board
I said “take me down the road a ways” he said “what do you mean,
I thought we were going to the doctor’s place to finish this whole dream”
I elbowed open the door and dove over the guardrail
rolling down a cove I flung up like a Tar Heel
spinning in the air my hands shot out in a brilliant transition
from rolling with fierce speed to floating in position
then I zig-zagged back to the water like a Forrest Gump feather
saying if your heart is a ship then your mind is the weather.

The city was sneering back at me with a sinking stink face
the cheerleader was scratching her acne with a waving pink lace
the smoke stacks hissed and hacking as the kettle drums marched
the wheel chairs were street legal and the bubble blowers were parched
the river washed off the garbage and the sky was carefully set
with a yellow and blue gas burning sun, one that was barely lit
the governor cuts down the dusty drag and the juggler struts through a tent
he traded his balls for a custody tax but neither knew quite what it meant.
How can the seagull get fat off the land and the hobo dry up in the gutter
when the grand land of the bread winners hand uses the rest of the world like butter?
and a symphony somewhere far off plays silver strings a mile long
but we’ve got infinite ways to wink in the face of the most microscopic of songs.
We are the folks that buy the hoax our diet Cokes and grins.
We cracks are jokes like egg yolks and beat on the one that wins.

Just then my leaf buckled, I chuckled and sank into the folds of sea
dripping like a honey suckle I was a curious delirious bee
rage shook the four winds and panic set in the face of the witches
a piercing blurting empty emergency alerting vacuum burning with glitches
soaring out a wounded chorus the daughters Doris rang ‘til their eyes were fixed
and the mothers stirred their porridge staring worriedly through the mix
“how did the boy get back in the batch!”, asked a mad chap falling lame
“didn’t he learn no one’s returned from the place in which they came.”
my eyes went blank and sound it sank into a ice cold shimmering silence
farther and farther away I floated fleeing from dying islands
until nothing sweet nothing, pillowy snow billowing slowly, loafing towards no end
I kicked up my feet, put a stem in my teeth and made fire engine noises around the bend
townspeople in heels, outrun by the wheels, threw dandelions into the wind’s fist.
Every one missed.
On the track stood a girl, she pulled the slack in her curl, laughing, she blew me a kiss.