The downtown fountain ceased to flow
the day the bailiffs ushered you off
like it was the end of a show,
exit stage left,
lawyer shuffling his script,
judge glancing over the minutes.
I went to work at four'o'clock passing the fountain once more,
hoping that its omen was only for you this morning, still dry
Scapegoat, your friends make toasts of hope to you, carefree,
Yet you'd stubbornly pull your load
circling us still
along the same one way roads,
between the pizza joint
where you'd scour flour
from in between your fingers.
Clocking out to linger with friends over cold beer
Between the pizza joint,
the apartments above the cafe,
and the quarter turn,
The quarter of a year when you moved 450 feet and 45 degrees
around the block to the top tier of the next studio apartment
grilled steel shivering in the 5 minute parking spot
Between where you made pizza,
and the cafe where the smells drifted up,
The landlord is screeching,
at an empty door,
to this day,
for his pay
Between work and your two prisons was always the court,
that not after long became your new prison.
like you're looking down from one way glass.
All the same sort of news
that maybe sooner or later
hardly reaches the papers
Wednesday edition resting on the cold stove top
Good a place as any,
nowhere else to put it,
put it out.
We were supposed to visit the horse farm together
just to see them one more time you said to me
like those good old days when you were on top
Used to train them,
used to ride them,
used to break them
Admiring the breed that didn't submit until beaten across the face
with a lead pipe. And now you beat yourself up until all
those pages of music you wrote became a stream of cattails to run through
notes growing higher,
breaking low,
galloping off to long ago
You are a golem,
hung with children
climbing your riven column
Sucking maws tearing at your fat flesh as one face,
looking up from amongst the scavengers, saw itself in the mirror,
its brooding eyes chasing your strong perspective into hiding
Possessive wanderings in the music of double bass kicks and hooves
and taking that old rod to the face of those unaccountably carefree.
They'd quake your guts with the relentless buzz of a tuning fork and
I know of your hope, Chuck,
that your unraveled fiber could sing your only son to sleep
Will this be a child's legacy?
Pollution muffles the bodily alarm.
A constant, gnawing sense of impurity
The sign on the fountain,
Don't Drink the Water.
Hasn't killed you yet.
Author notes
The picture is not Chuck, nor is Chuck the guy's name. But he's a Chuck to me like his real name is and he makes me feel the way dude in the picture does, so understand me from there
How do those bones feel?
Comments
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I worry terribly about the stanza beginning 'you are a golem'. The fleshy implicit violence is so disturbing when laid alongside the musical references. It's really horrible and nasty of mind. I hope this is what you intended and I'm not in the later stages of paranoia. I, too, had to read this three times just to get into the, to me, shocking mood of your writing. BUT perfect in the sense that it got my undivided attention and YES - perfectly punctuated and spelled. Ah, joy.... xx wish I could deliver a high five but anyhow, have my best which is a high three (mmmm not quite enough - ah well....) !
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woah.
I'm going to have to read this one several more times. there's a lot happening here. (there?) the linesa bout the newspaper are sticking with me, I don't know why, but they are, they're just sitting in me. And the closing is drawn out in a really trying way (testing/trying) that I really enjoyed
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yes it worked!
The newspaper was the most artless element in that "put it out" puts more than a few meaning for the previous lines but the same feeling for all of them. Honestly I was actually worried about the final crystallization of Chuck, heightening the truth of him into metaphysics almost to keep the reader fixed to the "rogue's grin" sort of line at the end. Thank you so much for this praise. The favor is hereby returned.
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