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1
The air is a thorn
with each breath an ambulance.
Our horizons grow smaller
as I watch an orange cloud hang.
We need a wind.
What if an acid rain streaks
across my solitary window?
Bodies eaten in the streets,
cars rusting faster to their stops,
the death of the sirens.
What music will we play in the lighthouse:
the Ninth or a current pop tune,
when the petals drop?
2
Breaking the hotel door,
bullets sting the rushing air
like cars backfiring.
A bloody wound of a crowd has gathered.
Somebody is going to die.
The heat has the intersection covered with rumors
a peer was shredded down to the broken glass.
The killer pieces our eyes with his gun,
waving himself into the brickwork.
The pawnshops are clanked with iron gates.
The Arabs have locked the door to their store.
The Chinese waiter waits inside an empty restaurant.
Today we have no food for the dead.
Shards lay cold on the littered pavement.
Buses die, their drivers cursing.
A loudspeaker vibrates a warning through the canyon,
but the gunman is in the cracked walls with the rats.
Rooftops reflect a starless blackness
with cops pacing and shining searchlights.
Helicopters sprinkle their blades of paranoia,
and death is plumbing the depths of the sewer
waiting to punch more leaking holes
from driving nails:
I run, I run down the bulging curb,
each step a scream.
3
The violence of our lives is to wake in fear
and die in our sleep;
to watch the streets of San Francisco,
a liquor store too familiar behind stagelights,
flooding neon through its veins, robbed
for film by actors.
Chasing a greasy hamburger with smoke,
I recite my number to the desk clerk for the key.
The elevator executed on its chain, open
for a stretcher and the coroner's white coats,
I take the stairs one by one
letting a stubbled veteran pass.
Attendants block the hall with the corpse.
Why do we barricade our way with death?
In the labyrinthine garden of rocks
and endless numbered doors, I walk on
a flowered carpet past my angers and lusts,
turning the latch to a dark room.
4
I pull the shade.
Goodbye, billboard.
Through the sliver of my window, I see
two men against the nailing rain.
A pole and a bottle support one and
asphalt holds his friend in a lake.
A police car slices by
blasting words and water.
The standing man tries propping his bundle,
but the broken sticks of his arms wobble.
Then one wino alone hugs a street lamp,
forgetting the foundation of his steps.
A black truck
swallows him like a rock.
I throw a wrinkled balloon at the traffic
to break my solitude into solidarity,
but listen to the walls settling
knowing death is the infinity of space
that holds us all in place.
--David Joseph
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