street lamps

by mathias

Posted to Poetry on 2003-07-27 18:38:00



Street lamps
Bow-
In reverence
To asphalt roots.

_____

but I heard Pandora didn’t open her box-
no, her lantern ran out of oil and some Negro in the night
came from ‘round a corner
and stole her box-
and he opened it,
lookin’ for change to buy some food for his starvin’ kids.

so now there are street lamps
that only burn out in the day

and we got locks on our doors too-
and blue-clad men beating up Negroes
outside our doors

and we got places made of iron bars and barbed wire
and they have locks too

we got laws
so we got crimes.


and above the bubblegum and blood,
beer can glitter of gutters,
in our light-polluted and constellated heavens
we’ve made fat men,
four ninety-degree angles,
six sides to burning gas
phonetic chants
and synechdodes of the moon eating a nearby star.

_____

but bubblegum makes the red-cheeked children happy
and beer cans made someone forget
and blood, well –
the body wants to die anyway.

and street lamps,
when I’m not tossing in nihilistic bedsheets,
and screaming at having to be in complete dark,
I love you.
I’ve been here too long and felt all the rhyme and meter
of your beams and seen a million lone guitar players
make you their personal spotlight
and too many bums searching for their particular
shade of orange on the night sidewalk to sleep

and I’ve written too much of myself in you to give up.

and I have a feeling if I turned you off,
and the stars were there in all their infinity,
and I could be completely sure
the fat man was actually a Monet from far away,
it’d really ruin the surprise-
you know,
the nothing of it.
the beautiful nothingness
of pure, innocent ignorance-

that you are a human delusion and dream.

____

Street lamps
Bow-
In reverence
To asphalt roots.