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.