Hello, my name is JonMaker
Outside, I can hear
the neon lights winking their red eyes at me. Outside,
each wheel from a passing truck gasps as it slides over the rough tongue
of the road. Outside, cigarettes flare without matches. Outside, gasoline
drips from the noses of pumps nestling inside their metal wombs. Outside,
the traffic lights flash red red. Outside, the animals inside the pet shop stir
and brush against their cages, dreaming about eating flesh. Outside,
each streetlight throbs. Outside, headlights swallow each other.
Outside, bats collide. Outside,
runaway tabloid pages glide toward a secret rendezvous,
a place where they could peel off every headline, every caption,
every word, and, as each letter is shed, roll up
into one great big ball of paper, grainy photographs
digging itself in some muddy patch of earth, burying itself, desiring
desperately to be reborn as a tree. Years later, after I am gone,
it is still waiting to bloom.
* * * * *
The lines have long burned away
3 am leaves only the weary, waiting to fly
An old lady in a rumpled dress gets up
to walk to the smoking room but forgets
her Marlboros
Nobody speaks.
Everyone
starts moving towards
each other – secretly, inch by inch
looking for warmth and solace from their ghosts.
