| Like A Andy Jackson Cloud |
- I was speaking to a palm tree the other day.
She was quite the good listener
I was asking her for a date or two
Explaining how so many dates on one tree
Must be a terrible burden to bear
I offered her a bucket of cold water
To soothe her parched desert roots
But alas she wasn't willing to share
Or so it seemed as she never spoke
But merely swayed to an unheard song
Passing slowly through her fronds
In the eternal arms of the desert wind
A lizard scampered up her trunk
As a Turkey Vulture sat atop a phone pole
In melancholy silence and solitude
Perhaps waiting for the feast to come
Did he perhaps overhear my conversation
Thinking death draws near as date deprivation
Was somehow a prelude to starvation?
Lines of fire ants ran frenetically
To and fro then back again once more
Hurrying to some unseen micro feast
At the end of their formic trail
A clouds shadow approached slowly
Darkening the ground as I looked upwards
To see the face of Andrew Jackson
Smiling down on my little theatre
As his cumulus passed slowly by
I walked over to a little house
Long ago abandoned by some fool
Who thought he could live in this place
Surviving the daily infernos heat
As I peaked through the window inside
I felt very voyeuristic and odd
Like I was breaking the law somehow
Violating a statute of times penal code
I walked inside to find terminal disarray
As if someone left in a panic
Leaving all they had behind
There was a piece of paper on the floor
A front page of a news paper
Tuesday March 8th, 1938
The Los Angeles Herald Express
Soviet Purge Reveals Medical Murder Of Gorky
Youths Charged For Beating Victim For A Penny
2nd Huge Storm Hits L.A.
Seems like nothing ever changes
As it imperceptibly changes
And time, that invisible commodity
Of which we have too much of
Or never seem to have enough of
Slowly consumes all as she passes by
Like a Andy Jackson cloud
Hiding her work in the shadows
Of empty homes and wrinkled eyes.
I wonder what vulture tastes like?
