Monday, April 19, 2010

the future yawns like a giant who swallowed
too many super-spicy baby shrimp
at a Chinese restaurant on Chatham Square
that no longer exists

the aftertaste of that five-alarm meal
lingers like a ghost in my mind's throat
as I stand in front of the new thing
that replaced that particular restaurant

the square still a bustle of buses
and bastards while the old neighbor morphs
no longer the backdrop for The Beast From
20,000 Fathoms's cop-eating car-crushing

rampage but now a vista of gleaming towers to the north
amid the rumble of all the place used to be
while the same common humanity stumbles into the jaws
of our own natural mortality

a mouthful of memory triggers this inane meditation
and I should be a teacher? I should be a lightening rod
for the Divine? what have I got to teach but the
hermetic sloth protecting me from engagement

of an impossible (from the earth's view) future
a ghost with a plan for transcendence
and a delusion of heaven to comfort my final
earthly minutes...seconds...? This is

pretty heavy for someone who just stopped
on a corner of a city street remembering
a long-ago dinner at the place and then went his way
thinking of other things...

and recording it now years later on this obscure blog

the future still yawning like a giant who swallowed...



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

No comments: