There is no ventilation in this room
And the medication is leaving me hung over.
Just up the street at a meaningless intersection
Excavators and bull dozers chew up pavement
Gnaw it into chunks of life made manageable, destroyed.
The constant beep beep beep of Caterpillars backing up.
My home has been sold – decades ago.
An Asian girl grew up in my room.
My room. God damn it, my room.
She’s slept in that room, wept in that room,
Hoped the autumn school clothes she bought
Would impress a boy here, a group of popular girls there.
She’s a garage sale. She’s a runway fiasco.
Brittle heels fall like exploding buildings.
There are earthquakes everywhere.
The earth is consuming us, one at a time
Hundreds, thousands at a time.
The end is near Cassius Clay.
Sonny Liston doesn’t matter anymore
and your wife stuck it out with you.
Fifteen rounds.
The way it used to be.
Before concussions, confessions and brain damage
Dead boxers on the bloody tarmacs.
The candlelight in a woman’s bedroom
Tattoos crawl all over her back
Her skin stretched over an awkward scapula.
Eggs sizzling in a cast iron pan from
I want to lay my face in it
Burn off years of scar tissue; let the flesh breath.
We walked the streets of Knob Hill
Fought on
Danced to Strangers in the Night
In
Careened in endless ovals
at
John D. partly engineered The Great Depression.
I bet you didn’t know that, did you?
There is nothing new to learn.
