UNTITLED #3


 
So I’m sitting out on the sidewalk
in front of Prospero’s Books
late at night,
watching the traffic go by,
beeping and honking
with lights flashing like
they’re talking while the
people wander in and out
of the bar on the corner:
yuppies and bums,
strippers and poets,
dancing so they don’t get too close,
like they’re magnets or something,
polarized for their own protection
from each other,
each on a course
that’s evasive at best,
doing laundry, getting tattoos,
beer, the daily news with
cigarettes and coffee, eating
and walking, talking and
drinking in little shops.
It’s a last supper out here
and each apostle’s got
his job to do, leaving scorch marks
on the concrete,
bits of paper with old numbers
under empty cups…
This is primordial stuff,
this mulligan’s stew of us;
give it heat and pressure
and some strange green
lightning bolt and 39th street
might sit up, scratch its ass
and mutter…
and what would it say
about you
or me
while we hang on for our lives
like we do every day,
and still are,
sitting on the sidewalk,
drifting down the street
like we’re secret words
written with invisible ink
on ancient tea leaves
that get scattered
by celestial winds
that no one,
no one
ever
reads.




-Brandon Whitehead