The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Joe Wood's picture

    Money Don't A-Matter When You're Free; Freedom No Mind If You' Broke

    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.