MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
I walk, and I see the world.
Talking to no one
Like a silent storm.
Thinking of things to do
And say
Waiting on a train platform.
Nobody knows who I am.
Invisible cameras follow my footsteps
My boots, in the sand
My shelf of pretty pictures.
Repeating words
That echo and rhyme.
I pour myself into words and images that haunt me,
Like shadows that run through time
And follow me.
Like burnt out diamond light fixtures
Like daydreams of what should have been.
Like hidden messages on a
phone, you decline to answer.
Like a woman waiting.
Me, disappearing
Like condensation.
They will judge me, I'm sure.
Stuck in their relentless trance,
they will never know.
I don't create. Or copy, or
Measure.
I just dance.
I integrate existing matter. I imitate.
I go down in
Subterranean passages, without a ladder.
I breathe life into dreams and signs,
And choruses, sung alone.
Things come to me that cannot wait,
Like flying designs
In the wind.
Images cure me, like leather.
Like medicine.
My eye and my hand must write out
My feelings about sky, and earth, and man.
About empty spaces.
About people
Lined up like a crossing train.
It rains out of me, and
I try to collect the drops
As they drop to the floor.
As from a giant cistern.
I hear songs, and try and learn the sound.
Like a prisoner in Hell, I have
No choice in the matter.
I am just a voice,
Singing loud.
Without a lantern, I explore the cave and the field.
As they spend all their time
Trying to sell me.
I try to reflect what is concealed.
Unsealed, like a scroll in the sky
Like a bell ringing
Like a sound in the land from
The line of telephone poles,
All saying
"I am."
In vain, I fight,
With color
And black and white.
And all they say is, "give."
Hey Mister
I don't want to own nothing--
I just want to know what is happening.
How to get home.
Just if I were a deep sea-diver
Like a trapped miner
I am inside,
Going out with no plan.
Through their lectures
In perfect rows
While calmly sitting
My mind is my gun, thrusting through the air.
In the pale blue sky
A shrill whistle from the wires
An electric bundle of cord.
While there waiting, on the edge of a bench,
On an empty train platform.
Oh,
Do not ask me why;
It does not matter, maybe, why.
I'm just there.
I just felt compelled, I say later
As ten million moments scatter.
Who knows.
Maybe I was just bored.