Beats for the Downbeat
Poems performed for Mt. Cloud’s Spoken Word Events
I.
Perhaps this is the sense of an ending
Our cafe
Alone in the rain
Boring restaurant jazz
Misty mountain fog
Pine trees and crows
Alone
In transit
II.
So I’m standin out smokin 3am side of the road and security comes out and asks me for a drag
Says hes quit but these long nights and the smell of my smokin got him all needy for a hit
I say he can have the stick as I got another and I fumble around my pockets for my pack
Askin him what made him quit and says my children five and eight my whole world now sleeping next to my beautiful wife in a home small but lovely tucked in the mountains
I say you’re a lucky man, mos people don’t comer round that for a lifetime
He smirks and the cigarette hangs loosely from my lips waiting for a light
His phone tings and I see his chat light up with a woman hes sweet talkin and sweet nothingin and he looks at me with big doe eyes and takes a long drag from the cigarette before stomping it out on the curb
I bring the light to my stick and draaaaaaaag
I think to myself 3am side of the road watching out for cops
Goddam I wonder how my half brother is
III.
See I always felt like somethin was missin
My childhood had no nancy drew hardy boys mysteries to solve
Hell, the only mystery I ever solved was why my mother turned the TV off when I saw her watching carrie miranda samantha charlotte frolicking in nyc
Didnt have no john green loves
No alaskas katherines or hazels
No roadtrips or smokes in a wood behind the school
No semesters in paris
Just endless mountains and wondering why all those girls whose names ended in A never loved me back
Got no lost generation beat generation backpacking europe and roadtripping america
Just rickety jeepneys and vomit buses takin me where i need to go
How many more fantasies, how many more lies
How much comfort can i find in books that tell me adventure is out there ending with me staring out the window far into the horizon
Longing for a home I’ll never know
Miles to go and more
To reach the lights on a distant shore
Looking for a home I’ll never know
IV.
Saw you out in the forest pissing and fumbling for the box of smokes in your pocket
Eyes telling me to stay away and come closer
Speak up and tell me
Theyll see you over there
It’s just vapor isnt it
They arrest me for boiling water?
It’s all the same to them
You zip up your pants and the cigarette hangs loosely between your lips
You light it and i see your bloodshot eyes clear
I take a step back
I ain’t on drugs, just been awake since 2 AM, 2 PM now and my shift starts in an hour
Damn man, shit, I say, how are you still up
He drags on his cigarette and smirks.
The fuck you think im doing now
I tell him im fucked up too but not from drinkin friday nights saturday benders just offsetting a nightshift bug that makes me sleepy at noon and awake at midnight
You tell me you aint one of those callers, just there to fix up but you know your damn way around a circuit board better than those idiots on board
Just didnt graduate
Aimin for Canada or fuckall where they can respect a blue collar worker
Butcher, you say, ECE flunked the fuck off, 2 AM at the market for apprenticeship at the end of a shift, 3 PM shift at the call center, home at 12 AM, clean eat shit, 2 AM rinse repeat
Our conversation lasted longer than your cigarette and your bloodshot eyes teared up
Was it pain? Exhaustion?
Shit we aint on drugs but we might as well be
Selling our souls for white pocket change
Did we want to? Or were we forced to?
V.
The first time I hitched a ride was with my father
In a tricycle with a family of four
Can you imagine it?
There they were, mother, daughters in the carriage
The father on the bike
Sunkissed, leather skin
Daughters babbling, mother fussing
There we were, my dad and I, 6 foot flat and 200 pounds each
Skidding across manmade dikes to fight a volcano
Can you imagine it?
1991 they said, they couldn’t move out since
And they continued to live in a dumpsite, a graveyard, a pig sty, and a school, all within a 100 meters of each other
I looked at the mountain of trash
Its true
They got it all for you
Even the trash makes it to those who can’t find their way to the grand temple of capital
What were we doing there, you ask?
We helped film propaganda
The army comes, shoots footage instead of bullets and leaves
As if nothing ever happened
The second time was an accident
I had wandered too far and too late
Put yourself in my shoes
A wayfaring stranger in an ancient city, dark forest, a hostile sea
I watched the waves crash against boulders on the northern shore
As I smelled the kerosene lamps lit against the salty sea breeze
And heard the cooing of an infant as a grandmother lulls them to sleep
Haunting.
Put yourself in my shoes.
The wind blew against the rickety huts as the sky grew from a brilliant orange to a dark blue bruised sky
I wandered.
Wondered if I fell through time for the second instance in the old colonial city
Wander. Wonder.
I walked into the dark
A tricycle driver took pity on me
He told me it was dangerous to walk at night
A wayfaring stranger through an ancient forest
You didn’t know what watched from the bushes
There were the coconut dealers and I spent 30 minutes bouncing around with the coconut nuts behind the truck
The lumberjacks bringing firewood down the mountain, their cigarettes stronger than the smell of sap and musk of the wood
The colorum, who I told my name was Manuel, not too far from the truth, and told me to tell the cops I was his nephew
Wonder and wander come from the same word.
Wound.
I have lost count of how many times I have found myself wandering. Wondering. Lost.
Only to be at the mercy and kindness of strangers
I wonder.
Can one get across the archipelago at the mercy and kindness of a peoples
Taught from birth to hate themselves?
