As if we’d stirred a fire beneath our toes,
you merely say, “Be stuck no more”,
and dance, for all it’s worth. begins;
before it’s hard the concrete pours,
thick, like Sicilian soup:
Then out with this typewriter and its qwerty keys,
out those obsolescent cameras, rolls of film, slides you never saw,
a plethora of unplayable tapes, Gregorian sound.
The whole 20th Century shebang is getting gone.
You too, I guess,
and now there’s me,
haplessly cradling a basement of boxes from age thirteen,
their polyvinyled pages glued,
smothered by the years, and stained.
Now sacrifice
your mildewed diplomas to the flame.
Where, O where will our pilgrimage end?
We’ve been here so long.
And the fuel: It’s low.
It is hard to restart these engines of the heart