9/12/09

Back in the ‘seventies, in the laundromat off Longfellow Square,
an old man passing me offers parting words, Never get old.
And the absence of teeth around those words I can recall
as if that laundry Sunday were just last weekend.
Gloomy Longfellow Square, ghosts shuffling around the centerpiece,
Longfellow’s statue around which traffic streams.
Ghosts are beginning to outnumber the living pedestrians.
There will always be a sex shop across from the smoke shop.
The people crossing the intersection slow down as watch-parts do.

Now you cannot purchase a decent wind-up watch without
a cheap quartz chip embedded in the circuitry, from Taipei or Shanghai,
Circuitry waffled and delicate as a kanji character that speaks
of several conditions or dependencies that all begin at once:
a certain seasonal green and a mood that goes with that green:
alertness, acceptance, quietude, hopeful disposition toward the future,
order of lower and higher magnitudes, harmony in arrangement,
balance of complementary attributes, ducks in a row.

But no more watches, no watch springs, no brass gears or casings or teeth.
Where are the orreries mimicking the planets in lovingly cast parts?
No longer can you buy a cheap hooker or a flask of 20/20,
Drink it sitting on a milk crate at the base of Longfellow.
I blinked and thought I saw the pedestrian traffic slow,
Their faces no longer familiar, been there once before.
All bums have been expurgated from the book of life
Along with the testimonials of the sons they wanted.