EVERYTHING HAUNTS
THOSE WHOM IT KNEW
The palms of my hands hold a city - a city of
my very own - on one side the Ministry of
Tourism, on the other the Ministry of Home.
Tattered blankets hail from windows, shading
to thin channels of light, narrow alleys where
children and sparrows play. Balconies and
verandas here and there somehow separate
the sky from the light; the wiry shafts of smoke
and gray. Doorways hold the hallowed sights
of families and daughters and sons. The hang
lines are filled with clothing - the sheets whereon
men and women sleep and make their children,
the vast and sail-like brassieres of old women
and the shirts of little girls, the underpants of
old men, discolored in the crotch, and the little
babies' cartoon character clothings. Beneath the
pole - clattering its rope in an open wind on
a dark blue metal, two tough teen boys stand
about, smoking their surreptitious growls. In this
city I walk, my blind eyes both opened and
closed, making no difference while sensing
there is none anyway to be made. A twenty-
year-old car grunts along its forward motion -
past a bakery and a store for lotions; yet
another Kiehl's with perfumes of the heart
within. A motorcycle lamely passes on the
side. There is a motorman, on his shift, seeking
a factor of ten by which to divide the old
schedule of time on his slow-moving train.
This character, Bob, seeking time to gain.
Here is my Carol, there is my Jane - such
separate items, each; loves and moments,
hearts and minds. All the world is different
now; we have detached each single emotion,
connected, now none-to-anything at all. The
old, grizzled veteran falls, on his own corner
he's dead - still fighting his war and pronouncing
aloud his litanies, of dread and all those tired, old
wartime moments. I want to lift him up and say,
'no one fights anymore.' Yet, alas and still, I
cannot. For we are, yes, as yet forlorn as a
1918 poppy, or a sticker for Iwo Jima or
Dienbienphu. Everything haunts
those who it knew.
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