Have A Coke And A Smile
For three days I've sat wondering about three days
if this is how it is, finally realizing
after all these years of three days
the contempt I must have for something inside
but I can't find it. I look and look
for it outside the parameters of those three
days that come in pairs and triplets sometimes,
wonder about the babbling brooks and sea line.
Is that where it is at? I just don't know.
Winter is the best time for the activity of wondering.
No where to go and no one wants to go with you there.
The streets are slick with the slime of summer
for the first few and they come clean after that
but you don't want to attack them in the usual way.
If I do it is with the commraderie of pilots,
navigation systems of the Byzantines as water
indicates the need for an aqueduct or two
all the while listening to a song about a corner
in Winslow Arizona where we were, not so long ago.
The surges there of geology all around, flowing
just flowing in rivers of rock and the Ice Age.
Painting there and Indians selling silver bracelets,
the poor of the plateau, the divested of the main.
In the ouzai they sell inflatable Santas in December
in the squatter shops and bathing suits in summer
as if taking a bath were a common thing and Christmas
is for them too. There is a resentment and appreciation
for this kind of thing floating in our rivers
as the rains clean the city up a bit, I wonder
where it all goes and how the future rock will present itself.
I once saw a tree with a coke bottle firmly throttled
in the fingers of the root, have a Coke and a smile!
as I proceeded to the slaughter of a goat, that area
with putrefying fats the dog gets off on.
Have a coke and a smile the tree said to me.
We've not moved very far out of the sludge.
On occasion I'll walk down to the Gulf Mart
just to give the folks on the way a kick, they'll try
to talk to me but I'll be thinking more about
the sewer mud and the black color of sewer mud.
I'll resent that but not their well wishing,
and the fish market near the Gulf full of special kinds
of fish no one knows about. Not orange roughy but yes,
some salmon and occasionally, a lobster tail.
More like Hoki, less like snapper. That is what I'll do
if boredom becomes depression and that becomes something else,
something like ice in the spleen and you imagine the liver
quite large by now from the anesthesias. If that isn't enough
there will be more at the origin to think about,
the knick knack mosque in the arcadia quite lovely
and the Syrian in the doorway downstairs
his serious labor for the day concluded and his feast
on the floor near his mat. I'll ask him if the cockroaches
are dead yet but he thinks I mean the temporary condition
and I'm talking permanence. Are they still crawling
out of our own personal aqueduct Murad? He nods but asks
about the light switches in the conducive common way
an employee asks about anything pertaining to my quality
of life as opposed to his, as if I didn't know.
As if I didn't know what composes all of the days of ours,
the togetherness of this building and that one over there.
As if I didn't laugh when they played It's Raining Again
yesterday as I ploughed the freeway on a juggernaut
faster than anyone else, a measure of superiority.
Three days and more to come. More inside jokes and cokes.
More of the watery graves in which we are all sinking.
For three days I've sat wondering about three days
if this is how it is, finally realizing
after all these years of three days
the contempt I must have for something inside
but I can't find it. I look and look
for it outside the parameters of those three
days that come in pairs and triplets sometimes,
wonder about the babbling brooks and sea line.
Is that where it is at? I just don't know.
Winter is the best time for the activity of wondering.
No where to go and no one wants to go with you there.
The streets are slick with the slime of summer
for the first few and they come clean after that
but you don't want to attack them in the usual way.
If I do it is with the commraderie of pilots,
navigation systems of the Byzantines as water
indicates the need for an aqueduct or two
all the while listening to a song about a corner
in Winslow Arizona where we were, not so long ago.
The surges there of geology all around, flowing
just flowing in rivers of rock and the Ice Age.
Painting there and Indians selling silver bracelets,
the poor of the plateau, the divested of the main.
In the ouzai they sell inflatable Santas in December
in the squatter shops and bathing suits in summer
as if taking a bath were a common thing and Christmas
is for them too. There is a resentment and appreciation
for this kind of thing floating in our rivers
as the rains clean the city up a bit, I wonder
where it all goes and how the future rock will present itself.
I once saw a tree with a coke bottle firmly throttled
in the fingers of the root, have a Coke and a smile!
as I proceeded to the slaughter of a goat, that area
with putrefying fats the dog gets off on.
Have a coke and a smile the tree said to me.
We've not moved very far out of the sludge.
On occasion I'll walk down to the Gulf Mart
just to give the folks on the way a kick, they'll try
to talk to me but I'll be thinking more about
the sewer mud and the black color of sewer mud.
I'll resent that but not their well wishing,
and the fish market near the Gulf full of special kinds
of fish no one knows about. Not orange roughy but yes,
some salmon and occasionally, a lobster tail.
More like Hoki, less like snapper. That is what I'll do
if boredom becomes depression and that becomes something else,
something like ice in the spleen and you imagine the liver
quite large by now from the anesthesias. If that isn't enough
there will be more at the origin to think about,
the knick knack mosque in the arcadia quite lovely
and the Syrian in the doorway downstairs
his serious labor for the day concluded and his feast
on the floor near his mat. I'll ask him if the cockroaches
are dead yet but he thinks I mean the temporary condition
and I'm talking permanence. Are they still crawling
out of our own personal aqueduct Murad? He nods but asks
about the light switches in the conducive common way
an employee asks about anything pertaining to my quality
of life as opposed to his, as if I didn't know.
As if I didn't know what composes all of the days of ours,
the togetherness of this building and that one over there.
As if I didn't laugh when they played It's Raining Again
yesterday as I ploughed the freeway on a juggernaut
faster than anyone else, a measure of superiority.
Three days and more to come. More inside jokes and cokes.
More of the watery graves in which we are all sinking.
