VII. The Indians Or The Ghost Dance
by F.D. Walsh
atthinam nagaram katam mamsalohitepanam yatta jara ca maccu ca mano
makkho ca ohito "Of bones the city is made/plastered with flesh and
blood/ where decay and death are deposited,/ and pride and
ingratitude."--- The Dhammapada, #150
WE ARE THE GHOSTS THAT DANCE
THE DANCE WE STOLE AFTER
MURDERING THE DANCING MASTERS.
What I'd found
in the thick of
this one big city
I discovered in
myself too late,
perhaps. And rushed
anxieties that
towered way over
my head on stilts
of dry rot and stains
under the sodium arc lamp
I fell in with
and entertained
a few women
who I assumed
rested between stations
of the cross I left
it fall out of
my opening hand
the one that would
cash pay checks,
untwist packages.
What's the difference
between me here now
and the accidental boy
in black suit , blacker tie
clipped on to 8:30 AM
waiting for the freight
trains to churn across
like million pound yoyos
into, out of the Hudson
Yards, the stinginess
of old creosote, not
ever the honeysuckle
the high fevers nobody
wanted to notice but
comic books and paper
airplanes grounded
in Saturdays' wonders
made him believe
that the chains
of boxcars were
not moving but
the earth instead
under his feet
like a Hi- Fi record
he was born
out of his head
like everybody else
way back then
I want to
come back in.
WE ARE THE GHOSTS WHO DANCE
THE DANCE WE STOLE AFTER
MURDERING THE DANCING MASTERS.
Strange rage made up of paper
a determined death wish in-grates
in fetish the ego's locked down
in laws change is ground
in beliefs truth is blind
What matters gain the threshold
heightening we get with it
so we take what we catch on
is the posture- pedic comfortable
is the three or four part sofa
comfortable, the cell, the coffin
but for now the first object more often
we sloth and watch the staged wrestlers
match our thoughtlessness thought for thought .
WE ARE THE GHOSTS WHO DANCE
THE DANCE WE STOLE AFTER
MURDERING THE DANCING MASTERS.
|
