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We hover over pimp flats and microbrews, push
credit cards between practical slits toward gluttony.
That everywhere we are smacked
with human energy, muscled in on
romantic construction sites and whatever
became of the new economy
that expedient coaxial dream;
That in the local route’s conductor
kindness becomes a force
of nature and thunder
on the mountain rolling
stock into Market East in hundreds;
makes tags twist and buckle in commercial exhaust
from Shop Rite to Lord & Taylor. That’s not right.
Weary people find an in-
stance to disarm their interferers. How to be gentle
standing on a lower platform, waiting for the unconducted F.
Exhausted under the stars attached
to street lamps they don’t buy it.
Here the uniformed classes may show little will
to abandon their corporate script, shop under duress,
sign efficiently; but who’d spend breath
on a loose-stitched idea
and diamanté flak jacket,
keeps their council. Who’d tangle
tags of routine transactions in their cuff links anway.
Oh give me a home where the friendly exhortation throbs,
offers up its smile for a tip; that’s just belief in primacy
and a manifest destiny to tender. Oh from their porches
in Orlando a nation’s vacationers wave,
happy voters. E-shares keep
baby in handcrafted toy-lets,
float the SUV out on autopilot.
All resting with peace of conscience in them,
the new Israel. Armed with the best money
can buy. And anyway their idol
candies everyone with his
winsome, secretive smile, the good looks
of the likeable schmuck stupid as a neighbour,
the mild innocence of an orphan. James wades
through a hundred stations
looking for a tolerable script, sucked in
to the prayer channel tagging
35 dollars as market value for Christian
slaves; buy one for Christmas
from militant Islamic dealers
in their criminal Sudan.
I can’t answer out. Trust has no tongue.
Moses packs his mitten from the floor, heads
toward the road the leads out of the country
club back into the city, gets lost and dirty.
Between feeling and thought is a script
for conflict, choose
to surrender
to happiness
or dissolve it in a bath of cold ideas. How much
can your credit buy before the cashier cuts up
the transaction, turns your precious accident
of language into nothing
but races your heart? The girls are live
in the booth, where your choice lies. If you know
where love falls to earth, naked, or real stars can be
seen by working people. You may be called
to testify.
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