transit, TV and graffiti

an old one which I think I read once at a poetry reading then never shared with anyone else. self-inventory -- I put the boring ones in books, send the boring ones to contests, and generally keep the good ones to myself. must remedy that. may that this be a start --




houses appear behind hills;
snow lauds, litters brush-strewn narrow ways;
brush, brown and bright red,
usurps like a tangle of bodies in Purgatory,
longing, reaching for release.

warehouses graced by graffiti,
schoolhouses,
bored spouses behind hidden windows,
TV screens onto TV queens
watching machines that make them forget,
carrying a nonsense of history,
a litany of
the banal, the barren, the crude, the crud,
clogging memories down to the pixels.

and more graffiti, more,
“VERBS” and “DANK”
and things I can’t even make out or understand.
the sides of sitting trains and abandoned factories
where it is scribbled,
comprise a television for our time,
for two decades of RTA rides.

and in this space, these artful young hooligans
are the producers,
are the stars,
and the set designers
of shows for which
the commercials are the show itself.

but no money flows in
or out
of their hands;
barren of all but a glimmer of hope,
their hearts starve for the doing,
for the living, and the aching;
and no respect remains
for the walking of other peoples’ straight lines.