13th and Mill Alley

I see insane individuals marching through desert streets arm in arm

and an envious chord is struck inside, in that midnight moment.

They're bare foot and a summer breeze, and drunk, with no future

and no desire to dwell on things called past.

And a twelve, a twenty-two, a forty, or a handle

tucked tenderly under arms as an orchestra of metropolitan sirens cue the waltz Matilda,

and they dance under sunny streetlamps and concrete dance floors.

Back-rooms and backseats substituted with back-alleys where primal activity

lays them bare and ambiance ignored.

I'm floored.

Complete amazement and astonishment,

and exhale callousness of breaths in the sweetest summer moments

between two nothings going alley with no-ones and nothing to do.

Another life, calling me home. Meant for that Matilda melancholy,

for that reach of Rochester cackling the impotent tunes in tones and quarter notes.

Wednesday youth preacher never thought of something so swell.

Sunday Priest sent them all to hell.

And no one knowing all the while that they are the freest of the free

in a land that waves that flag with constant fervor.

They are heroes. They are more than us, and somehow less.

We stomp them under our boots, but they will never die.

Or if die they must, they'll die with a whiskey warmth

that shames all other deaths.

They know nothing of neuroses, and nothing of evil.

They only know now and how they feel and what they need,

and if they have to scrounge to get it,

we are not so distant relatives.

Ashamed and not interested in risking being caught a voyeur,

I crawl back to my car, where the key slips into the ignition

with self-indulgent ease.
This machine is better situated for the coming life than I.

Though different than me, and feeling like the last human, I stand

erect and find no solace and nothing hoped for in other world

or this one.

No inner light, and no outer demands have satisfied this primal urge.

The primal urge of procreation much like any other,

rests less on sex than on want for knowing future folk.

And where am I, and who shall I be today, and what,
and what tomorrow?

In doctrine of America, I steep like tea-bag and it tells me I am ready,

ready to be drank and drunk. Ready for the rough and tumble real world,

ready for the next if horns do play and I'm called by shallow desert grave.

We are America, and America is unreal,yet we are somehow real.

And none can tell any other that his life is wrong. But wrong is what I feel

living this life of right. This life of mine, because I've never caught it by the

horns but it has gorged me and gunned me down and there's no medic in the world

to heal the sick

as Jesus might.

Jesus. What a church. What a man!

Was the son of god to be so poorly spent?

Was the sun supposed to be drowned by night?

Were ying and yang combined and found a third option

better than third rail of New York Subtrain system?

Who is what is where?

Where is what is who?

I'm speaking nothings again and they feel more real than my

other times talking around campfire, or political circle,

or the round round edges of each finite day.