Saturday, February 14, 2015

lunch hour





the maidens who work in the miasma of moloch's malaria
move their feet slowly
and their pocketbooks calmly
in the pure blue afternoon of atlantis

the flower seller has survived
but the man who sold newspapers (printed on paper) is history
and the shoe shine man has been written out of the history
which has itself been burned in the blast furnace of buck rogers's blueberry pies

i would like to ask the flower seller
the secret of her enduring fame
but the curtain of caution falls over me like catwoman's caressing camellias
as don fernando tunes his piano for his final performance outside the newly opened panera's


someday - very soon
savants will remember panera, and ruby tuesdays, and dunkin donuts
as the flashing emblems and impregnable strongholds
of a lost empire

and nothing , not even the smiles of aging maidens
opening their pocketbooks to buy flowers in the blue afternoon of betelgeuse
from the last flower vendor in the expanding universe
is so sad as a lost empire