"Pinball Paradise", "Bar", and "Adult Books" appeared
in Grand Street. A Russian translation of "Pinball Paradise"
by Regina Derieva appears in The Coast (Russian font support required).
Tidings
Images of a torn condition
In littered back streets linger on,
Fading beyond all recognition.
The pigeons murmur, and the dawn
Prepares another day's edition.
Outside the high delivery doors,
The homeless shiver in their sheets
Of sodden stock quotes, baseball scores,
And wars that rage on distant streets.
They wake to hear, like cannon roars,
The gunning engines of those fleets.
With gothic mastheads on each side,
The presses roll their grinding flood
To city corners far and wide.
The morning's misery and blood,
Tossed off in bundles neatly tied,
Hits the pavement with a thud.
Bar
The cherub faces in the mirror
Peer into the sea behind them;
A shady tender drifts between
To moor their vessels and remind them
What the damages have been
For bringing smoky visions nearer.
A drunken figure shouts "I'll buy!"
To one who passed out long ago.
Some black-eyed joker makes a pass,
Jostles against the glowing row
Of bottled spirits in the glass,
And sees the reeling stars go by.
Adult Books
Among the crowded racks that rustle
With soiled and fingered magazines
Of runners-up to beauty queens
And males of disproportioned muscle,
It seems at times one can detect
A feverish sort of intellect,
A purely impure contemplation
Of limbs in every combination,
That strive, as they contort and thresh,
To multiply the bonds of flesh,
Reaching, in their perversity,
A Shiva-like infinity -
Then glimpsing, as they writhe and hammer
New clauses into the bestial grammar,
An old satiety not circumvented
Unless new orifices are invented,
And going dank into the musty night,
The weary pupils shine with chastened light.
Night Office
The ghostly conqueror's column grabs
The island air above the street.
Like yellow sharks the snappy cabs
Swirl all around his frozen feet.
An office lights up just like those
Across the way on which it spies.
But here one labors to compose
A song and dance that no one buys.
It feels more like the vacant floors
Above those lit and paid so well.
Over the heads that keep the scores
It hums in darker parallel.
By measures solid and financial
His little business seems unreal.
No wonder he looks insubstantial,
As insubstantial as he must feel.
He watches the white figures flitting
Around their desks and monitors.
His task consists of mostly sitting:
It seems to be what he prefers.
Whatever he sees in the dark
Can't make him do much else but sit.
He moves his pencil, makes a mark,
And afterwards erases it.
How long he sits one cannot guess,
And God knows how he pays the rent.
No phone rings, and to this address
Nothing is ever faxed or sent.
What's sure is that the light goes out,
At some point, like the others do.
The windows darken all about,
And that is what it all comes to.
As the late-working world surrenders,
Some cabbies close in on a fare.
Atop the yellow swarm of fenders
A stone man seems to walk the air.
Pinball Paradise
Forget your hopes: the sound of bells
Has drawn you to a neon door
Where no one buys and no one sells.One coin will take you to the shore
Where cares dissolve in colored lights.
But lest your shade be asked for more,
Take care now that your paddle fights
To keep your soul mercurial
From whirling voids and other frights.
Roll all your life into a ball;
You have eternity to kill,
And like the tally on some dial
That never-ending digits fill,
The vision of those mobile spheres,
Suspended by the player's skill,
Consumes your moments, days and years.
© 1982-2002 Alan Shaw | alanshaw@prosoidia.com | home | links