Poem: Loop Track

 

Loop Track

 

purple

drapes ashen foothills,

as tandems of loops

of clovers of rows of cars

plod a slow conga, two by two,

headlights or reds,

vain under the rejected moon.

 

starts and stops,

snarls and sputters,

almost a chant, a curse,

at least from a distance,

this monotone of rubber,

cut now and then

by a shriek of treads.

 

alongside

this congestion of herds of cars

and, as well,

stacked in their little boxes,

dwell the citizens of fluorescence,

where the candles of technology

never burn down.

 

androids and apples,

televisions and monitors,

the people’s eyes cloy

hour after hour,

bending their spines

as if a wick in carnal wax

bore the weight.

 

and yet always in the end,

at least for now,

the spines get up and walk off

from the obsessive lies

of the addictive plastic.

 

such false crystal balls.

and yet,

 

what magic they bear,

rolling around all harried night

inside exhausted heads

to torment and titillate

brief, seduced dreams.

 

still,

 

no one wants to wake up again;

but dawn sounds the cattle call,

that bloodstream of metallic rivers,

drowsy no longer in the rising stress.

 

already

the skyscrapers have caught

the beauty and hope of this new morning

and swallowed it

into their intestinal pain.

 

 

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Today is my brother's birthday.  He would've been 55 years old.

A Green Day song keeps going through my head.  It reminds me of his struggle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soa3gO7tL-c

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