The green chair is all that is left.
The city in perpetual crisis.
Me in crisis
With everything non-existent
Except as it occurs to me,
Screaming.
They don't know what it's like
To not let go, hands
Rigermortis in release.
Everyone I see
Is who I was
But can't recall
Except by seeing them
As they disappear
In the middle of it all:
Calm Valet,
Coffee This Way,
Pershing Park is empty
But it is full
Of too many ghosts
To even give names to
In registers of incomplete
Seeing, inarticulate
Response,
Inability to peer inside
Any veils of who they were,
Hiding through.
The efforts they made,
The sight unseen,
To be invisible
Because they wanted
To be noticed
At last, for once
By eyes
That
Couldn't.
Their own, as they go
Before they can tell me anything
I too much want to know -
What hangs ethereal,
Unrung bells
Not the chime inside my ears,
The purple
In the sidewalk cracks
That lead me where to go
But I resist
Because I can.
Darkness is always the go-to
When beliefs
Get stretched
Like yo-yo's.
The sun shines
Ignorance
On all of us as one.
John the Baptist on the other hand
Sued until there was not anyone left
To summon.
Bert's Outfit Shop is closed.
The glow inside
The parking deck's immense.
There are yellers
On every block, and they try to
Hold my attention
Or make me avoid them.
Or am I imagining
The insane
Because I have arrived
At my own doorstep,
From the forgotten?
So the reminders, city faces
Dead-man-walking by,
Some holding hands.
Other people.
Why are you not scared?!
Is there a golden thread
To discover yourself
In the thicket of the one?
With company it seems
But not really -
The cord's been cut
By you, entirely.
You want to swim here,
Currents float you further
From the shore.
