not to care what foolishness brings… stares…gestures of minions being led to offices…car washes…buffet tables…barstools…church pews…dentist chairs…wisdom pulled…thrown away with rubber gloves and antiseptics…

seated on a park bench…chatting-away with myself…occasional cries…reading from a book by Rilke…a poem of autumn’s mystery…damn that German…

the phone has not rung…there are no messages… noise is inside…not my head…it is a soul that stirs… aches…longs to be heard…

by you…by you…

kids wade in fountain waters…poisoned…pennies and dimes among candy-bar wrappers and broken bottles…they laugh…and laugh…and laugh as young mom’s with tattoos smoke cigarettes and drink Dew…looking for a man…always looking for a man…

deals are cut before me…Spice bought and sold by ghosts who died long ago…always had one foot in the grave…the other too…only a matter of time ’til completely buried…put in-ground by pushers…peddlers…parents…public institutions…never fitting-in…not in this American fable…a god hears your cry…

soon skies will darken and the lemmings will safely walk through doors to homes purchased with blood and bills…second mortgages…money leant…apple pies baked…suburban dreams of Florida and Arizona nesting when all is said and done…birds flying south as birds always do…safely landing…always safe…

and i will still be on this park bench…chatting-away and reading Rilke…

this is the business we have chosen…

*thanks to Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo…