Where is this? Are we on Mars?
America – just count the stores,
capitalist carnivores.
That so-familiar movie score,
the swish of passing cars.
The city built on Brotherly Love
(Wells Fargo, Fitch and Abercrombie)
at the mercy of Pam Bondi
- was that a person, or a zombie? –
What was Madison thinking of?
Car’s no use: no place to park it.
Arrested at a funeral home.
No gravel pits, no air, no loam
- eat your heart out, Kristi Noem
(Checks Cashed Here, Medina Market)
Can this be noon? It feels like night.
What are these groupings? Hangouts? Dives?
They’re ganglions? They’re human hives?
Squandered talent, wasted lives.
Subway line blocks out the light.
Sidewalk garbage. Mostly men.
That hokey old verbal agility,
“insure domestic tranquillity”
correctional facility
for the heirs of William Penn.
Human beings are detritus
(Lifetime Nails, Olympic Sports):
To clean it up, we use the courts
Perhaps we ought to build more forts
- and thus our id comes back to bite us.
Nudnick
By Sy Roth
Self, I say
Self,
Wake up.
Your ganglions
Are asleep again.
Wakey, wakey…
Those around you, nudnick,
Are whirling dervishes
Those who come and go
In the Speakeasys of their lives
And I am a silent partner.
Wake up dammit
It’s slipping away
You’re letting it slip away
While the humped dowagers
Prepare their casseroles
For the hungry men who’ve passed.
See in their eyes
Your sadness, Nudnick,
Where’s the fun in your voyage
Careless self
Elf of the bygones,
Shelf where the platitudes lay
Dusty
Fusty hungry dinks waiting
For their revival
Wrapped in their silent home
Domicile of mordant cells
For the somnambulist to walk echoey corridors.
Awaken before it is too late
Or perhaps it is.
The monster is caught galumphing to Bedlam
And the nudnick sits on the side of the road
Waiting for him to pass
Like a hundred-car freight train crossing.
Wake, I hear it in my ear!
Wake the nudnik from its dream
The train is a never-ending circus cavalcade,
And he yawns as it passes by.
They all yawn as he passes by.
I yawn for myself
Yearning to avoid the parade
As my eyes close and sleep invades my reality.
Infinity,an ongoing paradox
there is no end,without a beginning,
no center without circumference,
primordial matter the ancient ylem
or...are we and the other orbs,just
ganglions in the almighty universal mind?
light charged signals of transmission
transient thoughts with a purpose,
...maybe a supernova isn't the end,
could be the spark of a new idea
radiant particles splashing
the fabric of space,like
an artist would on blank canvas...
Infinity...whispers to me,
as I gaze continuously,and says
"the depths of you,is as deep as I..."
and with a sigh...I wonder,
will I ever be able to touch such depths...
Infinity,an ongoing paradox
there is no end,without a beginning,
no center without circumference,
primordial matter the ancient ylem
or...are we and the other orbs,just
ganglions in the almighty universal mind?
light charged signals of transmission
transient thoughts with a purpose,
...maybe a supernova isn't the end,
could be the spark of a new idea
radiant particles splashing
the fabric of space,like
an artist would on blank canvas...
Infinity...whispers to me,
as I gaze continuously,and says
"the depths of you,is as deep as I..."
and with a sigh...I wonder,
will I ever be able to touch such depths...
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