In cities of the golden age
the past is slow replaced
like curtains staying in the house
through layered shades of paint –
The filling station skeletons
play next to living children
gyring hula-hoop hallucinations.
The present is a funny thing
and one can’t really say
those aren’t new milkman bottles
or shiny whitewall tires, amid the
galvanized eaves and asbestos tiles.
A local butcher trims a cut of fat off for a boy
as trophies are displayed inside the stationary store;
vacuum cleaners need repair –
time is never linear,
The world that some thought ended never died,
it just went unreported and unrecognized,
The deaf men from the factories
go to their bowling leagues
while kids eat paper candy
from a truck called Mister Softee.
Ghosts of fins and ticker tape
go floating in the sky
while workshops full of motor parts
stanch the slow march of decline.
To love the frayed and rusted into shape,
to dust Venetian blinds,
to call the worn and dingy home -
there’s no peace with the new,
there's only holding on.
