I suppose you are tired of it now.
Waiting for the rain to fall on the window
in that exact manner to bring about a tip-tap
sound of calm, against the backdrop
of suited racists and poets;
all claiming freedom
in their ten-minute slot.
The corn-fed chicken sleeps on the roadside.
It is covered in a kind of paste that seems real
in the moonlight, but even the strays
have learned not to touch.
Where are you now, imminent revolution?
Did you disappear in drink?
Perhaps you didn't exist at all.
Still, the pipes kick in through early morning,
heating the sheets you have just fallen within.
You allow flutes to bring you to slumber,
but awake to a pop song interference
of adverts and traffic news.
There is a lottery win and a winter cruise:
just enter your number,
and then apply within.
You cannot remember the last time you felt alive
thumbing through old anecdotes with friends,
all the stories have been told to completion,
or else have turned to myth nonetheless.
The pavement is real
but the passing faces are not.
The Clock Tower is heard
by all the people the town forgot.
I suppose you will still be drinking red wine
for each rough afternoon, family tradition,
or freak acquaintance to somebody
you thought that you knew.
I suppose my poems lost their meaning
once I spewed them out in parts.
I gave up a new direction,
to sit in the dirt of a dying art.
c