JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

Outside a new city waits to be explored

while here inside old friends get ready

fingers tie sneakers – odorous frequent fliers

road-stained from a dozen new cities

eyes, sunglasses, muscles warming up

stories waiting to be written

 

At his desk behind my left eye

sits route-man inking nib in preparation

soon he will start recording directions

left into Esperanza then third right at Nazionale

over wooden bridge past tin fenced

construction site and so on while

behind my other eye camera and mike crew

are finishing off their coffee removing lens caps

plugging in cables flipping switches

 

Traffic has piled up over the bridge - late models

black and chrome, business like

most with driver alone grim faced windows tight

next to the construction site a yellow daisy

grows from a crack in the sidewalk

and by a one-storey building next to it

a queue of women is already forming

shuffling forward to be rid of their

unwanted pregnancies

 

Two more right turns and I’m jogging

round a little cemetery gray gravestones

some with brass lamps decaying bouquets

and here a picture of the deceased somehow

etched into a marble slab -  most of the graves

bear names and dates strangely familiar

I don’t know why

 

Traffic on the main thoroughfare is now

bumper to bumper so three times round the

cemetery then risk my life between the vehicles

retrace route past the abortion center counting

backwards now. Outside the hotel a pair of cats

are facing off fur bristling they wail their war cries

in unmistakable cat Esperanto fighting for the right

to pass their genes on down the feline road

 

Machine coffee plastic wrapped breakfast roll

check out by ten another city logged

another smog filled day another bus another

airport just another city most of them

are alike these days.