Silence Follows Static
it’s not blackness, not even darkness, just a
muted quality seen through a minister’s veil, dull and
drab as uniforms in olive, oil wars raging between
bible belts and red suspenders, between
homes and owners. Serling-plots line our
memories and yesterday songs
remind us of tomorrows that never came but
the music has changed more than we have.
Johnny’s gone and everyone says they remember
Johnny but they don’t really, not in sepia
soundtrack and pony picture shag, like we do.
now we shuffle through our todays and
yesterdays, more songs than days
of our lives and we need more time to
listen then we will ever find. we just keep
losing time and our minds and
even olive drab, i suppose.
that is, if supposition were our thing but
we infer little, cut few lines, and keep our
mirrors clean, though they have tarnished and streaked
over time, the glass bleeding as glass used to do back
when glass used to break and neighborhood boys
used to play ball. and here i am, the old man
i was born to be, with a nose like Philo T. Farnsworth,
a turn of the century Luddite living just on the edge
of a new world went wrong. all of the things
that went wrong. i am sorry Philo for the
travesties and reruns, for the things we have killed
and the shitpools we have dug.
even the dark screen in front of me is ghosted with after-burns
of our father’s bad habits, the patterns of its light etched
vivid and deep into our beings like failures inherited and
purposefully willed, the things we refuse to see. we
swallow Technicolor sedatives and buy thicker hair,
donning armor and veils for our glib interactions with
the world.
Johnny is gone, Philo too and
no one has seen the pony-man for
thirty odd years. Syd Mead was a fool
or maybe a liar. there are no rocket ships, no
exotic colonies nor remaining stations, just decaying and absurdly
realistic bungalows, monkey-mind habitats, more
imagination than wood or brick, maybe straw at best.
Smoke Signals 