Station Birds

Back again this year you little flyers

Back to the neon signs and electric wires

In front of my station square

Feathers float frozen in the air

Ten thousand cries shrilling

Ten thousand birds milling

Those idiots from city hall

Shoot sonics of no effect at all

They stand and scratch their heads

To make their daily bread

Truth is I am content

Where your mating season is spent

No ones raises an eye

To the orange halogen sky

Save for once a year

When your flock draws near

And when you leave this street

They gaze back at their feet

I thank you from my heart

I will be sad when you depart

Although you sing gaily

In thronging compact amity

Here among the human herd

Such friendly song is seldom heard

First Jobs

Job is such a dirty word

Blow job, lube job

Con job, boob job

And the first job

Is always dirtiest

Washing dishes till morning

Driving vans at night

Painting warped fences

Moving cans in the storeroom

The first job

Is a dirty deal

You are screwed for being young

The only thing that makes it doable

Is being young

So smoke pot in that kitchen

Blare the stereo in that van

Have paint fights

Drink a beer in the cooler

Steal sandwiches from the tray

(You know how much you steal

Is calculated in minimum wage, right?)

After work

Go to that all-night party exhausted

Or drive the streets silently with friends

Break into the park pool for a dip

Walk the summer streets of the city

Bask in the radiation of youth

Although the jobs will get cleaner

You will never be this clean, this pure

Again

Friday in Japan

Gym panted girls

Red rose tattoos on your shoulders

Playing a taiko drum game

In a seedy neighborhood department store

Must be Friday afternoon in Japan

White mini van

Tired dirty worker at the wheel

Blasting J-pop out at 100 decibels

Stopped at the redlight before the station

Must be Friday evening in Japan

Emotionless cop

Surveying the scene

Heavy stick in your hand

Manga in your back pocket

Must be Friday sundown in Japan

Dying coverall man

Phoning from Fukushima

To the CEO’s Tokyo office

Two men sweating on either end

Must be Friday night in Japan

English Evolves

When the past tense of lose

Is loosed instead of lost

When schoolchildren no longer

Can understand Shakespeare

Then we have lost

Something of who we were

Becoming something new

Good or bad I cannot say

I will not deny evolution

Just wish it didn’t mean

So much will go extinct

Gene Pool

Dark shadows and golden light

Dance on concrete walls of the Aquarena

Echoes of barefeet slapping

Other children laughing and squealing

Some splashing or horsing about

Swimming dangerously over the deep end

While we sit in chairs behind glass

Your leg in a cast, eyes wet

My first love

And I hold your hand

My swimsuit folded, unused

In the empty chair beside me

Drive

Misty mountain cleavage

From a Sesshu charcoal

Held between bullet train tracks

Made of poison concrete

If I get cryogenized

They can clone tuna

From my stomach contents

If they hurry

The fastest cars in the world

Crawl down the slowest streets

Lights every fifty meters

Police vans blocking the flow

Phantom Limbs

Morning

You wake as slow and sleepy

As I

Refuse to connect

Or even upon up your programs

Noon

No flesh connection

I feel you still

On my lap

As I work

Night

I talk to the wife

Then turn to you

As she turns to hers

Until we sleep

Dreams

That four am reeling

Dark before the dawn feeling

Drunk around the dairty dishes

Sick to me stomach

But needing the money

Cold and homesick for the rising sun

Sweaty dreams of the rolling fog

Snowfields a dream of their own

Will it ever be thus

It will indeed until the dream is done

In case you're wondering...

I am alive, as this blog. It has just been a few weeks of non-stop work and school intrusion on my inner life. Ends soon.