Issue Two - Bob Sharkey
Midnight
White sheets hold
tree limb shadows.
Nerve bundles connect.
New snowflakes reflect
moon and star light.
Synapses spark.
57
How to sum up a year like this?
March 17th compared to same last year.
Despair disgust replaced by
oh fuck it death goes on what
can I do about it got my own problems.
The people on the street any city street
the one we’re on now
going to or from work
standing at the bus stops
coming out of or going into
restaurants
bars
shops
grocery stores
coming out scratching for escape
in the distance the war proceeds
towards the next 17th of March.
The men lined up to sign up
their brown body parts flew into the air
our armored troops tanks arrived
to reconnoiter secure the area
again
into the air flew the dark body parts
of men who’d lined up to sign up
our armored troops tanks arrived
for the cleanup the cameras
and again
the bodies of men who lined up to sign up
were blown into the walls the street
our armored troops tanks arrived
to cordon off the area.
Where was the will to change to manage
for our armored troops tanks to arrive
before the men lined up to sign up
so only dust of the desert blew into the air?
Did anyone call congress on their behalf?
I didn’t. Did you?
We had our own problems worries
and plenty of them
let me tell you.
Happiness too.
Early spring along the Willamette.
Our son got married in August.
He aged away from any draft. Won’t go anyway.
How about them Red Sox!!?
And Beslan was only a nightmare
we quickly forgot, right?
One love won’t read the paper anymore
another hits the flashback before anchors
can say the “raq” in “today in Iraq…”
If our leader is like Hitler
then who are we?
So it ends even worse here
and in the distance, much worse.
I’ll proceed as a twittering fool
go out at night among the shadows
of children in far away places
friends loves lives long gone missed
promises desires possibilities lost faded
specters of myself also gone
or perhaps to come
post notices looking for those met once
who might have found the answer:
We met on the midnight bus out of Albany.
It was 1976.
You were a paralegal. I was a laundry worker.
In Buffalo, you got the next bus to Toronto;
I the one bound for Detroit.
I didn’t find a job there, had the best fried chicken
in the Cleveland Greyhound station on the way back,
found someone that looked like you
in the 25th Anniversary edition of Playboy,
pretty much led a charmed life,
never found the answer.
Did you?