OLD

OLD POEMS, OLD FRIENDS, OLD TUNES

At 36 powell street

Bird on the soundtrack

and the house soundtrack

is a blizzard of white noise

in the background

being as silence is indeed golden

and the antidote seems to be

more noise

how do we switch it all off?

Old friends seem to be lining up

to leave this mortal coil

and all the guys on my sound track

are

dead, dead, dead.

All the icons from the movies

the ones we eagary wanted to be like

are in their nineties

of having retrospectives on Turner movies

because they have kicked the bucket.

And aint it a bitch

when you can't afford

your bucket list

and your mind is willing

but your body isn't.

Every place you go has

blemishes

and the food

is fattening

or just plain poison.

And the city you live in

has clean streets but

smells like a rancid armpit

and the beggars and crank addicts

are filthy blistered

mumbling inanities

and doing the chicken

for the tourists.

Abnormal is the new normal

and greed is good

and the government

is edging into yet another war

to enrich the greedy

at the expense of the majority

the 99%

and the 1% act as if

their gated homes

were on another planet

because this bunch does not

actually ever fight in the wars

only profit from them.

War is the ultimate crime,

War is the ultimate theft.

And innocense depends on who

is telling the lies

and we are told to ignore our senses

cause what we are seeing

is not in the 1%

in the carefully crafted lies

the 1% tell

to gull us into doing their bidding,

JWL