Hold the mirror upside down, what you get's World Type B. All the worried fronds shake the same way off the humbled trees I park under. At some point under the scaffold hangs over the sidewalk, about halfway to the portals of Mary Help, the rent cloth laps damp against my glasses. It's not just in my figments I hear that lonesome coal whistle blow, it's time for it, it's still out there on tracks buried under asphalt on Avenue C, the train can't be stopped, in fact blue twists of fate take their comfort from that woo-woo up and down the solemn morn. There's thousands of us find our hands with our chins and loosen our sadness to the tune. The beast of light's the far side of four-five doors wracked up one after the other every whichway across the geodesic fumes. My friend, have you ever dreamt tears to cremate by? After life, all the contemptible soils to be plumbed-under brown the cuffs of someone else, depending on how close they stand. The dead, they bask off singing skat backwards in time to melodic ways. The leftbehinds tuck theirselves into beds redder than eyes. In their dreams there's stained smocks on the baby, on the cops, on the guys rolling the juice of the hops off trucks in kegs. As for me, I done bent my fallow all out of shape 'til it beguiles the fourth dimension with pollen. A woman wakes up across town--she can't move!, but she's woke up, that's the ticket. Sunday morning, the first three things you got to check off are jackpot, mind, or death. Check off the smells, the shit smell, the mold smell, the leather smell, same as in some nearly-November thicket 'midst a vacant lot. Do not, I repeat, do not saddle-up the hound. Seek out the charanga violin, 's'not hard to find. Where the world's all stuck-out with nails, move on, adapt. Somewhat. The stops are from rags to rags to dust. The nether is there, so look at it straight on, it's not all, or even most, of the story. There's still loins to slap, or hump, or flog, if that's your style. Peace is not in the air, it's but a moment caught on a hangnail. The quick want this from me. They don't want the real flat me, they want my pose. They don't want my promise, they want me ripe. They're fraught all asunder, and I smell of heat from their last smoke, and grease from their last meal.


© copyright 1996 John Godfrey