my
American education turned me into a penniless poet
clapping
erasers behind the school
clouds
of chalk dust billow
in
little felt thunders across
the
windshield of memory
driving
the train looking
into
the past for signs of change
or
patterns that have repeated
themselves
over and over like bells
and
everywhere I get lost in
along
the way
past
cafes and sidewalks
with
sandwich board advertising
for
the latest sliced bread
phenomenon
of human consumption
shape
shifting morals
with
the disappearing blue mail boxes
because
we don’t want powder
in
our letters ever again
so
we remove little barriers
to
construct bigger more invisible ones
then
sell you on the convenience of it
that
make it seem when you drum
in
a circle that you are now an odd fit
for
the evolution of the plasticity of blood
I
am not quite sure
when
it all began here in earnest
perhaps
when Henry Ford
began
subsidizing the Nazi party
in
Germany in the early 1930’s
because
after all money was honey
and
you had to go where the bees were
during
the great depression
if
you wanted to eat
but
since then our humanity’s mechanization
has
led to its micronization
and
cellular divisions
where
they can plant red or blue flags
so
far up your ass you smile rhetoric
in
the latest brow beaten fashions
you
become your own still life walking
as
if all art was finally unleashed
and
the streets were just filled
with
its decadent decaying half-lives
only
there are subtle reminders
to
keep it to yourself
because
nobody wants to feel connected
to
the moment let alone the future
in
the radiant strain of solar panels
lessening
the need for fossil fuels
that
we are driving this train with
so
I just stop and lean my body
against
some bricks like paint
splashed
against the wind
and
slide down to sit on the concrete
and
try to make eye contact
with
my pen on the page
dreaming
when books
were
more important
than
the repeatable
instructed
lies
we
got graded on
I
never played that song well
because
I wanted to feel
each
sneeze of chalk dust clapping
remembering
how sometimes
a
teacher would slip through
and
encourage me to eventually
do
what was inside of me
there
are no jobs for writers
painting
words
without
selling your soul
in
little bits of unadulterated gold
that
survived the immunization
of
doing right by a graded slot system
but
damn there are moments like this
where
my little memories fall into place
and
a dusty sneeze can grace
and
teleport me across pages of black ink
and
bent fingers pressing keys
to
please myself
I watch the world go by me
with
an odd smile
as
I wonder if any of you
sometimes
think about chalkboards
and
the sounds of lessons
we
sometimes met with day dreaming
out
the window
driving
the train
into
the future
thinking of the circuits
of circus behaviors
and
when the Doppler shift
began to turn you around
to
look at the past
as
a way back to where
we
might want to go
EJR
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