America (mp3)

Another recording of Chris' poetry. He reads, I play guitar, keyboard, and percussion, and Erin plays violin. Dig!

America

he is gentle
in his corner
standing hot in the night club.
he sees pretty ladies,
shorts skirts,
flirtatious diamonds,
rougher types that don’t
ask for tomorrow.
he downs a drink
and
pats his
pat white suit.
a disco light catches his eyes a moment
- flash and bang -
and he goes for the door.

his money spills on the floor
and he decides to
trip an elegant
youth on
his way to the bathroom.
the child tumbles hard
and
gashes his head open on the
tack tread floor.
America laughs and
rides high
into the night with his fists ramming
the nothing.

the moon shines bright
for him
for him
and the ghosts of the city
burst and pop through
the sidewalk as he passes.

an ambulance careens past
in flash.
America ignores its wail and siren
and makes for
his unlit apartment.
the homeless men
lined in the coffers of the
street
dance and jive
to a different rhythm.
their skin rubs
off the bricks surrounding.
America laughs
again,
the second time,
hoping for a third.

hookers, the johns,
pimps and
hustlers,
pool sharks and gangsters
,
tramps, up and down the late
night
avenue.
he sees the heroin pushers and
the dope fiends,
people smacked up and
dragged down.
the rude little morsels of a tender
upended life.


his apartment building stands
because it can;
it greets him in hisses of
materialistic courtship.
there should be that doorman
and his white gloves
barking orders through the
glass door,
but the night leaves off invisible.
America grunts and slams
the door open.
elevator buttons, the ride up,
the lobby and the
mezzanine.

his apartment will not die.
he flushes the lights,
fastens a pack of cigarettes into
his bourbon hands,
and fondles the fridge
bursting.
he grabs a beer,
a cold one,
turns the television,
sees sonic Manhattan doing
the great walk,
naked and nude,
well hung and grunting
and thrusting
meat into beautiful
bodies shrieking
as banshees on the
Fourth of July.
the fish tank is half empty.
the dead gone
tiny fish tell no more war stories.
it is all the
life of the city of the dying
and the damned.

America dreams of southern latitude;
the tropics;
go east, go west;
he dreams again of the great north pole
and the freezing air.
no life
but he laughs once more.

this third time hurts.
he remembers the cancer lodged gracefully between
his lungs and stomach.
surely this will kill him,
after so much time and progress and
chaos,
America knows that time grows
short short shorter.

he opens a window into the fast leavening
night air and inhales deep.
this is a last chance,
a desperate grasp into the infinite
of oblivion.
he gazes into the stars and blots
out
the senseless buzz of
celebrity talk miring in the background.
my destination
,
he recites again and
again,
and dreams finally of
astronaut adventures and
nineteen fifties science fiction.
project bluebook,
roswell,
the great hidden history of
UFOs.

then it’s lights out;
his mattress lies directly on the floor.
a catalogue of the good
life rests next to his
humble pillow.
he grips the pages, flicks a lamp
once, then twice,
and stares into the fine coffee
tables presented in
four color fashion.
go to bed,
America,
it’s over.
his eyes sparkle.
the magazine bends, folds, flops
over, and is discarded
effortlessly on the floor.
he goes away for
the evening,
no alarm wanted
or set.

his sleep rolls into deep breaths;
he dreams of civil war,
of bloodless
revolution
,
manifest destiny,
eternity and due process.