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The Slipstream
An inspection of the back wards
where the almost-forgotten are housed.
In cells along Z block,
sundry thugs
watch films of themselves hurting me
or people I noticed –
unaware of the wires
between their heads and the scanner
that registers their pleasure. “They’ll stay
till it doesn’t, and it always will,”
says the Warden or Chief Physician.
Their cells are like rooms, except for the bars,
and cameras showing all angles.
My ex’s father’s excuse
was that he had worked on the A-bomb;
later he just wouldn’t take his meds.
When she was young, he threw things at her,
and when she fumbled them
he screamed, “*What if that was a live grenade*?”
Dead long ago
no doubt, but out there, out in the slipstream,
where so many friends and enemies die.
Now, at a carefully-crafted word
I speak through the intercom,
he hurls himself at the door,
claws it and subsides, crying for his family.
I like the scientists who cluster
around the ambiguous, obsequious
director. They’re bright but passive,
happy to help me
add to the mix
of torments in this block.
Ignoring the occasional
crash and howl
from the cells, again
becoming memory or less than that,
they accompany me back
along the wide, well-lit
and beautifully appointed corridor. It is I,
after all, who finance this place.
It will not suffer
in the economic downturn.
It will die like me, not like an institution.
Fourth Quarter
*eal ţis eorţan gesteal idel weorţeđ!*
“The Wanderer” (Anglo-Saxon)
Five PM / 1700.
Dow, FTSE, Frankfurt down.
Dark. I drive to the suburbs.
They’re a peculiar mix
of American and European
meanings of the word.
Ethnoreligiously challenged
non- or quasi-citizens, i.e.,
the poor, have killed the elevator.
They let me pass, I don’t know why.
Every square meter
of wall is graffitied: a triumph,
perhaps, of the word.
But the flat I seek
is well-lit, with kids’ drawings,
nice sofa and fridge, plasma screens.
I’m expecting God-talk, the type
supposedly validated
by bulging Bambi eyes, tendons and veins.
The sort I’m frankly too evolved to hear –
a decalogue for lizards, Good News
for baboons. But the message here
is, “Signifiers become depleted.
The most deep-rooted allegories fail.
Words frame the world, but
‘all this earth’s frame shall stand empty.’”
Then they turn back to the game.
Unaggressively showing my gun,
I edge down the stairwell.
On the roads it’s still rush-hour
and shopping hour, and visions –
one must put it like this –
of boxes, glitter,
Santa Claus and forgiveness fill
the cars. The minds of the drivers,
that is, and spouses. The kids perceive nothing.
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