The Hollow Under the Hullabaloo

This was when I was at the Karma Cop.
That big gleaming club on Broadway.

So I’m working the door
and this kid there looks
too young to come in
plus he’s got no ID
so I tell him no.

And we stand there
staring each other down.

He’s got eyes like TV screens

each flashing different
jackpot atrocity highlights
that never quite match
what’s swirling in the other.

But there’s nothing under his stare
—like it doesn’t come from him—
so I decide to focus on that.

Then he grabs his wallet
and tugs out a credit card
and keeps slapping it with the back
of his hand under my face sneering

“Visa GOLD! Visa GOLD!”

And I keep staring
into the hollow under the hullabaloo

and I feel my body
widening like a wall
between him and the door
and I smile into his flickering face

and say no.

And he calls me a piece of shit
and stalks off.



.

Mister Bling's Blues

Trapped in a suit
among stern
faces waiting for a train
he still believes in the beauty
of a burst of birds above them.

Yesterday at lunch he wrote a song
called “I Don’t Want No Mung Bean Soup!”
(to be performed by an eventual
band bound for Chicktown
in a stale beer bar near you).

One rhyme
(“the working class
rakes capital’s ass!”)
makes him laugh huz-uz-uz!
to himself every time.

Last month he asked
his boss who asked
him to staple his papers for him
“What am I? Made of mayonnaise?”
and to this day his load is lighter.

And this kid beside him
with the pale slack floursack
face and buds in his ears
may well smell the world
(who knows?) through a rose nose…

Why shouldn’t this be a great day?



.

The Facts Are Not Correct

I gotta luck bone
jumping inside me

when I stand under a sunrise
and smell the slow world

and a slow ache
spreads in my belly

like a wind.



And you
are drunk with it too

making love while the clock ticks
yawning slowly to rise

into the day in your mind
dressing yourself in duties as I do

when we explain ourselves to ourselves
with a prayer

that invents the world.



But what world waits
like a far-off god

magnetizing the tides
of traffic slurring by

crowds of fellow travellers
who never exactly arrive

where we dream we are destined?



And something shivers in us
and our luck bone jumps

and we blink and land
the flash of our gaze

on a blinding circuitry
and see

the facts are not correct.



.

Television Eyes

A man’s got to eat

(so does a weekend monk
reprieved from the world
in the womb of his room)

so step out in the street

cars look like running shoes
(or do running shoes look like cars?)
television faces
wind in weaving trees
television eyes

television faces
contain
television eyes

dazed gaze
error mirror
sizzle dazzle
screen gleam

splintered carnival
fragments flickering
scattered sparks

swallowing radiant hollow
craterous gaping glare

flash : back : back : flash

blink
and
blink again

hurry under a static sky
to buy granola and yogurt



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