From Long Count: A Song of Days
by Cheryl Anderson. Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved.
Introduction:
12 baktun . 19 katun . 14 tun . 14 uinal . 4kin
I am not interested
in the flights of false gods,
the carrion of magazine covers, shiny pretty toy drummers,
slick-haired, pinned-up angels whispering barely heard breath
through thick begging bangs, smoke drum machines,
thick cock guitars, pleading spotlight.
I am not interested
in well-dressed dolls, Aphrodite’s discarded minstrels,
life-blood and vocals wasted on a perfectly healthy robot.
Give me a scream.
Way I see it,
we’re in the end of things, the crossroads, the nether-parts
and this wheel’s been turning long enough.
I knew it was a Tuesday
when I saw the Bearded One at the supermarket.
He bought a pound of flesh,
a copy of the Inquirer, a pack of Camels.
I bummed one for conversation.
As the smoke twisted his eyes
I asked him the time,
realized he was mourning it;
this nine-to-five salvation-on-the-clock gig
wasn’t treating him so well.
He said:
Whatever kid you got left in there
that hasn’t been entrenched in 12 month cycles,
six week report cards, state tests at 8 (no talking),
fear of next month’s cramps, or fear of not having them,
Whatever kid you got that’s interested
in getting out of town, riding a bus to no where
getting off in Vegas, heading west,
Whatever kid you got in your tangled hair,
your mismatched socks, your pain of abandonment,
your torn adolescence, tattered doll-friends and sad dogs:
Don’t let them get interested in leaving.
There’s a Time around the corner that everyone forgot,
where the sidewalk failed to recognize it was just bubble gum
below a pretense of rock,
This Time, it hides in tunnels safe from smog-sad songs
a far cry from any house of rising suns
but it’s a place, none the less.
You should come.
I told him I wasn’t interested
in the nightmare, I’ve lost friends to junk
might lose more before Christmas.
But Easter deaths are always worse.
He shook his head and said, No honey,
This is where you belong.
And he took me to the ancient workers of song,
where they’d made a shack from a home:
three twisted trees around two rusted railroad cars, confused cats
drinking wine in the yard from yellow moon-skinned bathtubs.
A broken gate-latch
lets most of our ideas out at night, he said,
but if you come out here,
away from the light, everything turns two shades more interesting.
Check out the stars, he said, the way the trees tell time,
and turtles line the soft streams of fatewater with strong backs.
So on this porch of un-baptized wood
We kicked back.
on a cinderblock mantle,
waited for the wind to blow a train whistle night-
waited with the panhandling cats and the old caboose,
waited with my beggar’s songs and my tongue loose,
waited while our minds erased sirens from this place
waited with
time
(it gets me through)
