http://www.artispermittedeverywhere.com
http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/displ ... orID=22800
Laurie Schoeman
ljsmimosa@yahoo.com
Route 22
When
It
All
Comes
Crashing
Down
I am going to be Sitting in an old rusting diner off of route 101
The cracking sound of eggs frying the silence
the coffee pot with a dull orange lid roasting on the stove and the
butter grease sweet the dimmed brown lines on the yellowed formica table
An old man is leaning over his coffee like a drunken priest and
The cashier is wearing a short sleeved cotton shirt with a floral design
(The ones where you can see her brassiere if you peer through her sleeves Long enough)
The air is dry--Desert dry
And it smells like diesel gas from the oil refineries down in Oakland
the men come and go Its hot out
Because It never rains in California in july
And there are too many factories out here to remember what rain smells like anyway
There is no grass to sweeten the air only the stench of the greased lard in all the fast food restaurants that litter this land. And where have all the main streets gone? There are only highways that rip up our towns.
I think I’m gonna be in a small town
sipping a glass of orange juice at the booth in front of the
cashier with the floral printed shirt
She has laid out a table for three
And it's only me here in the café
And the cashier
Who doubles as the waitress and the cook
And the old man who looks like a priest, eating eggs by the window
No one will join me at the seat in the diner on the edge of the world
And it seems like no one is trying to talk these days anyway
They are all just waiting for what happens next—the next sequel to the age of democracy
(Voice gets louder) I’m gonna be in a small town
the waiter will turn to me
and shout out at me
“GET DOWN” “GET DOWN” “GET DOWN”
the sky has turned white from a surge of ash
the air smells like chalk
the street will turn to red before my eyes
and shards of glass will fly through the air: cars, and houses, and streetlamps
oh how I wish I was back home in my apartment in new york city
no, everything goes blank the sound of explosions up and down route 101
the trucks lifting up and swerving into telephone wires and poles and street lamps
and the dust
the dust
the dust
its 4:07 in the afternoon
and the news reports will shout: there are armies in the streets of (pause after every word)
Baghdad
Cairo
Jerusalem
Tel Aviv
Damascus
Helsinki
Ramallah
Moscow
Newark
Roma
New York
Irvington
Bolougne
Chicago
Teschelling
Detroit
san diego
LA
People walk barefoot on portland's fair lawns
And washington dc is besieged with gas bombs
And Tallahassee has become a swamp of cement and bricks
And There are ways of wondering why there were ever ways of ever wondering
All those bricks and slabs of mortar
All those goddamned furnaces and mortgages and trappings of the middle way
Weren’t worth much at all, at all.
At all?
At all!
I pray that the time of peace is near
Because there is nothing else to hope for
I have covered the bald spot on my head with a black hat
I closed the door to the diner on the side of route 101
The empty patches of highway laid out before us
Once again we turn to dust
We fell in the same way that we rise
Oh bludgeoned day!