This is where there used to be
victorious arrivals of the city's survivors
and there was no static on the wires
no studies in silver, no majestic spires
But then those shots were deflected
by the sidewalk's unforgiving service
Stymied when our flights were defeated
we couldn't build boats
from this fairweather friendship
and expect them to float
on the river reversed

That's what I cringed to remember
this afternoon when I stood at the window
looking down into the rising water
hearing the roar in the basement
and watching the sun begin its slide
down the side of the steel casement,
your voice miles below me in the noise
But when those streets were dry,
you could hear the cold scrape
of the metal world I now occupy
in this mechanical architecture

I'll admit, I was feeling moorless
after riding in elevators all day
planting my feet, leaning into the lurch
getting used to the sudden shuddering climb
getting familiar with gravity's rift and resurrection
and later the scrape of the brakes on the train
sounded like the whine of flourescents
trying to make peace with the present
sounded like us making last year's resolutions
promising to be careful out there
and to cut the crap

Good enough for me, I said
so that's how we answered
the approaching murmur
of brushes against drums,
the bleating organ, the piano's dirge
and the cramped fingers on the viola
singing hymns we thought we'd forgotten
Step by step on Ash Wednesday
shaking our heads, lest we forget
the lessons of Ascension Day
in our fragmented calendar of regret,
of ordinary time

You acted like a latchkey kid
saying I don�t mind the rain
and I realized there was no stopping,
no getting off at the mezzanine,
so I stopped trying, let myself go
and receded back into the routine
Felt the plummeting leaden weight
the clothes falling from our shoulders
as we dropped pages of the diary
on the ground behind us

The girls and boys I used to watch
with whom I was enamored and obsessed
were lifted in twos on the escalator
to their places on the balcony
while the rest of us were whisked
from the country to the courtyard
and from there to the garden
pressed through the stones in the wall
back to the thunderous aplomb
the belles of the ball

Because what is a day, after all?
That become our reason and our recipe:
so we took our time, we stopped worrying
about what dark thing might be lurking
around the next sharp corner of the day
shedding our last layers of recognition,
our riddles and reputation. We feel this one
is somehow more urgent, since we
are no longer the laughing stock,
just laughing

0 Comments

Back & Forth