The Empty Stage

Clang and click, rumble
and bang.  The clamor
of many lives lived
besides mine roar on.
One neighborhood -- small!
A sea of talking
faces each absorbed
in minenowthisme
disconnected from
each other except
by the glue of laugh,
rumor, who did what.
We shared a dream once
outlined on a map
taped to a window
beneath a parking
garage.  In the dream,
synchronicity
and heads like flowers
to the sun turned face
to my direction.
Lips glittered with lines
from a jazz poem.
It's almost too big --
who could imagine
still more life and time
could follow, return
to minenowthisme.
Moments in a pile
each a smooth stone gray
as the river that
birthed it.  They accrete,
an accidental
design -- water glides.
Did you know how they
did that boy?  Sisters
by their radios
lamented his lot.
They mourned the announced
death of a notion:
a quality to
the light, the air's smell.
All were promised pain
to follow as he
was swallowed up whole
by the cracked sidewalk.
A song is all it took.
Fanfare, a flourish
of robes, cheap velour --
trickery, stagecraft --
the main attraction
is billed as the cure
for every ill, ache,
slip and doubt.  A shout
raises the curtain
and the spectacle
none could have foretold
will spirit away
the dumb audience
forever.  They'd stay
a dream that leaves scars
on a world of steel
and coin.  An army
passed through, played a game
unarmed and plain won,
champions of ours.
Dust clouds in its wake
as it marched on.  Dance
in air, then land flat
in the dirt, paper
angel only old
folks can place in time.