3753. NEWARK

DOOMINATION

DON TRILECKY

I watered the garden hose so it could water

the garden, those hundreds of flowers all

twisted and nameless to someone like me.

I see colors, and way too much bother.

It's way too hot to care anyway. The

sky is blistered like some lava-beach

cauldron, and it always will be.

Sitting at the airport, here on the

periphery of something or other, all

those foreign-name jets come rolling

down. I watch as they hang there, a

little roll, a little foil, and somehow

luckily always make it down. The

landings come in, the departures

roll out. A thousand strange people,

holding candies and wrappers,

and awaiting a film. The buzz

of the buzz is the buzz.

-

I'm talking to some guy from Newark :

a big, black fellow who says he was

born there, right in Weequahic, near

where the old streets were burning in

1967, and now where the 'Niggers'

(his word) are still living. I say nothing

much back, as if it's not my place,

I'm not his race, and I don't much

care anyway. Looking at him, my

main concern is never to get as fat.

-

Music is blasting from some internal

system  -  a sound so bad they call it

that on a dare. No one hears; they talk

and pose  -  those girls with the ultra

light hides, those two travelers from

Europe like walking in fire and wondering

why. It's a non-conditional world, with

everyone on their places and at their mark.

As if something was soon to happen but

nothing ever does. Another two arrivals,

disgorging frantic passengers, who scurry

off - all noise, and a fury, signifying nothing.

-

I'd rather pace the old still walls of some

ancient Newark prison  -  that historic place

on the other end of town. The Civil War era

lock-up, now beat and crumbling, wasted

itself like some old industrial site where

nothing's been made for ten hundred years.

It's like that here. It's like that everywhere.

-

They frenzy their travel to get out and escape.

I sit around waiting, at some useless gate.