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Poem
Oh to vacation behind the heavy metal door
To escape another election year.
All news is stopped at the door by the guards
Whoever sit in the same place
Waiting
Always
Waiting to retrieve all banned goods
And outside time. 
Between med time and bed time is empty time
Where those evicted from their bodies
Are stuck staring at their feet.
But all have the midnight carousal 
Under their tongues
“If that bitch doesn’t give me my meds
I’m going to kick that door down.
Either that door will break or my leg will.”
The one mercy in the sexless hotel
Memories fall way, sooner or later. 
Memories of what building was torn down.
What now empty store front housed
The latest failure
Now lays in the darkened reminder of memory. 
And constant reminder of becoming 
what is left behind in the 
this is the city o
Of the buried 
and forgotten.
In their place every mind
Is fixed
With a retread with no memories at all
And setoff to the outside and the vacation ends.
But retreads always fall off and litter the roads
Before they re-enter to antiseptic air. 
Only letters are allowed past the guards
I can’t remember the last time a received 
A letter.
Its all emails
And telephone calls these days.
Perhaps this is how I lost my sense
Of anticipation.
When was the last time 
I sent a letter?
Inside
we all can sleep the sleep of the forgotten
Some of us have gotten our fill of the stars 
and prefer a ceiling to an indifferent sky
and the empty heavens.
All others from these ranks who never returned
have wandered beyond 
the light of day
into the trainless subway tunnels 
and into the fold 
of the disconnected brotherhood/sisterhood
of the mole people. 

The mole people
This is the real lost tribe of America
living beyond the reach of landlords 
and their thugs for hire.

For each there is no need to peer into the shadows
of yet another condo.
Their hidden jungle
is not of the Amazon
but the Subway system
where no natural light ever penetrates. 
The soul is the first
and cheapest thing
to leave behind.
 I’ve heard the tribe will let you in
as long as you mind
Your own business.
There are no eviction notices at these depths
Yet. 
Their moon comes 
with the thunder overhead 
from passing cars.


Those who wish to be forgotten,
stay forgotten 
and are certain to replace
the hopes for a headstone with that of a serial number
marked for a pauper’s grave. 
This is the wish of the shut in
to die nameless in their SROs
or over priced
one bed room pad
in Washington Heights.
(Hiding from who?)
Hiding from those they wish to forget.
A psychotic lover
whose love is serrated
and cuts too deep 
till it reaches bone. 
Their own home town
which they attempted to cut the tether to
in a desperate escape.
Or death.
Death is what comes too cheap for most
and too soon for some
or too late for all others.
But if you dance forever you will never die.

The Clocks

Here clocks talk to each other
Of all the collected hours
by those who live by the clock
or all who can exist in confined rooms
as a natural environment 
with a waiting bathroom down the hall
and one foot on the third rail
The shut in turns a blind eye to the amateurs 
who fear being forgotten
several stories down.

2

After all the deals are made
and all the SROs torn down
and those of us who grow tired of waiting for the eviction
notice to be handed down by a judge on the take
 have moved on
 or held our ground
and after all New York 
becomes “open for business”
every street becomes just another bizarre, 
and when those who have been out to sea for far too long 
and wish to return home
are met by closed port cities
with indifferent silence
(Even the circus of your life has moved on
long ago.
Do you care?
The noise of the carousals have become muted)

you can peer closely through the crowds
to see the better ghosts
among us
the last of the American Tribe
forever flailing in the
last light of late evening
fading.
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