the young man on the bus stop bench
he sits all day at the bus stop
at Sunset and Western
his sleeping bag beside him.
he’s dirty.
nobody bothers him.
people leave him alone.
the police leave him alone.
he could be the 2nd coming of Christ
but I doubt it.
the soles of his shoes are completely
gone.
he just laces the tops on
and sits and watches traffic.
I remember my own youthful days
(although I traveled lighter)
they were similar:
park benches
street corners
tarpaper shacks in Georgia for
$1.25 a week
not wanting the skid row church
hand-outs
too crazy to apply for relief
daytimes spent laying in public parks
bugs in the grass biting
looking into the sky
little insects whirling above my head
the breathing of white air
just breathing and waiting.
life becomes difficult:
being ignored
and ignoring.
everything turns into white air
the head fills with white air
and as invisible women sit in rooms
with successful bright-eyed young men
conversing brilliantly about everything
your sex drive
vanishes and it really
doesn’t matter.
you don’t want food
you don’t want shelter
you don’t want anything.
sometimes you die
sometimes you don’t.
as I drive past
the young man on the bus stop bench
I am comfortable in my automobile
I have money in two different banks
I own my own home
but he reminds me of my young self
and I want to help him
but I don’t know what to do.
today when I drove past again
he was gone
I suppose finally the world wasn’t
pleased with him being there.
the bench still sits there on the corner
advertising something.
the canaries were there, and the lemon tree
and the old woman with warts;
and I was there, a child
and I touched the piano keys
as they talked—
but not too loudly
for they had things to say,
the three of them;
and I watched them cover the canaries at night
with flour sacks:
“so they can sleep, my dear.”
I played the piano quietly
one note at a time,
the canaries under their sacks,
and there were pepper trees,
pepper trees brushing the roof like rain
and hanging outside the windows
like green rain,
and they talked, the three of them
sitting in a warm night’s semicircle,
and the keys were black and white
and responded to my fingers
like the locked-in magic
of a waiting, grown-up world;
and now they’re gone, the three of them
and I am old:
pirate feet have trod
the clean-thatched floors
of my soul,
and the canaries sing no more.
the dead dogs of nowhere bark
as you approach another
traffic accident.
3 cars
one standing on its
grill
the other 2 laying
on their sides
wheels turning slowly.
3 of them
at rest:
strange angles
in the dark.
it has just
happened.
I can see the still
bodies
inside.
these cars
scattered like toys
against the freeway
center
divider.
like spacecraft
they have landed
there
as you
drive past.
there’s no
ambulance yet
no police
cars.
the rain began
15 minutes
ago.
things occur.
volcanoes are
1500 times more
powerful than
the first a-
bomb.
the dead dogs of
nowhere
those dogs keep
barking.
those cars
there like that.
obscene.
a dirty trick.
it’s like
somebody dying
of a heart