Untitled [Brazil]: photo by Gustavo Minas, 31 July 2017
Untitled [Brazil]: photo by Gustavo Minas, 31 July 2017
Untitled: photo by Chan-yang Kim, 24 September 2017
Untitled: photo by Chan-yang Kim, 24 September 2017
3 [Mumbai]: photo by Shweta Agarwal, 20 January 2018
Untitled: photo by Chan-yang Kim, 24 September 2017
Untitled: photo by Chan-yang Kim, 24 September 2017
number theory
Save those lungs, brother.
They'll just back up and take another
shot. I've been where
you are / It's nowhere
you'd want to be
again, and yet I'll see
you right there, again
being there in the pedestrian
crossing. The last place
a pedestrian ought ever dare
enter is right there, the street
is clearly marked but which
driver would ever care
before running you over?
Just ask Tom, my next door
neighbor. Oh no, you cannot
for Tom is dead
by traffic.
To me it's sick
but it's your society
and the only time
I've ever died was right there
and now crippled
when I see a cop checking me out
and I ask why
he'll say I was there
and I'll say where
and he'll say there
and then I'll understand,
as bad as I may be
and by god I am not as bad
as I want to be
some times, just crossing
your street.
My heart fluttering wildly, my eyes
full of blood, can't
move, it all comes back
and you're waving your hands at me
and honking
and screaming hey buddy get a move on
I'm late for work!!!
It used to be said
They've got the guns
but we've got the numbers
but the numbers have changed
and they've got them now
and the guns
they've still got those too
and then there are the cars
and the game
the game
the game is theirs
the game was always
going to be theirs.
going to be theirs.
For a moment there I thought I had fallen
asleep
and awakened inside
a red aquarium, and the game
narrowed down
to not forgetting
how to breathe
one
more / maybe last
time / can't be too
greedy
for life
at a time
like that, and the cars still
always
always
always
streaming madly past.
A sort of
courtyard, your
repeated
post crash dream.
Many small doors like windows.
One of those doors
has got your number
on it.
The door slides open
a technician in white
sticks his head into the lead
lined chamber
and says
You moved
got to repeat
that scan again.
There is no experience
you can have
that is not improved
or at least made
if not exactly
perfect
then more pure
more itself
by repetition.
A sort of
courtyard, your
repeated
post crash dream.
Many small doors like windows.
One of those doors
has got your number
on it.
The door slides open
a technician in white
sticks his head into the lead
lined chamber
and says
You moved
got to repeat
that scan again.
There is no experience
you can have
that is not improved
or at least made
if not exactly
perfect
then more pure
more itself
by repetition.
3 [Mumbai]: photo by Shweta Agarwal, 20 January 2018
4 and 6 [Varanasi]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 8 December 2017
4 and 6 [Varanasi]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 8 December 2017
Patchwork [Varanasi]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 8 December 2017
Patchwork [Varanasi]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 8 December 2017
Patchwork [Varanasi]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 9 December 2017
Untitled: photo by Chan-yang Kim, 19 January 2018
Untitled: photo by Chan-yang Kim, 19 January 2018
Untitled: photo by Chan-yang Kim, 19 January 2018
\
Protection [Rio de Janeiro]: photo by JMF_, 16 January 2018
The seller of bread [Mumbai]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 12 December 2017
The seller of bread [Mumbai]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 12 December 2017
4-1 [Mumbai]: photo by Shweta Agarwal, 18 January 2018
3 [Mumbai]: photo by Shweta Agarwal, 20 January 2018
![;] | by www.bawgaj.eu /Brighton now/](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4657/39870181311_77d051a492_b.jpg)
Untitled |Colombo, Sri Lanka]: photo by Przemek Strzelecki, 24 January 2018
8 [Mumbai]: photo by Shweta Agarwal, 4 January 2018
S0001236 [Mumbai]: photo by Shweta Agarwal, 6 November 2016
260b [Mumbai]: photo by Shweta Agarwal, 26 December 2017
Untitled [Italy]: photo by Yuro De Iullis, 12 September 2017
Untitled [Italy]: photo by Yuro De Iullis, 12 September 2017
You just put your lips together and blow... | The whistler: photo by Mike Smithwick, 11 April 2017
Winter Breath | Film: photo by Punkroyaltiger, 25 January 2018
Winter Breath | Film: photo by Punkroyaltiger, 25 January 2018
L1150278-bychie(pyoza)2017 | Bychie, Arkhangelsk region, Russia, 2017: photo by Emil Gataullin,15 December 2017
Untitled | Tawang, 2017: photo by Koushik Sinha Roy, 27 September 2017
Untitled | Tawang, 2017: photo by Koushik Sinha Roy, 27 September 2017
Untitled | Tawang, 2017: photo by Koushik Sinha Roy, 27 September 2017
Untitled: photo by Chan-yang Kim, 13 November 2017
Dylan: Like a Rolling Stone (live, Cardiff 2000)
ReplyDeleteDylan: Romance in Durango (live, Hammersmith Apollo, London, 24 November 2003)
Dylan: I Want You (live, Manchester 1998)
Riveting poem, Tom. Thanks. A world of (and in) peril.
ReplyDeleteI get up in the morning and see your work here, or come back to it after days away, and I think to myself, ‘I know that guy! How did that happen? How lucky a schmuck like me once knocked your door.’ I needed a breastplate today for your poem blew right through me. Got to pick myself up, dust myself off, etc.. Kudos, to you Mr. TC.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks tpw and TP.
ReplyDeleteTom, this proves the luck that day was all on my side of that door. And as it happens, we've got an extra papier-maché breastplate lying around here somewhere, left over from the mock storming of Troy VII. Just waiting for that big end-of-decade cleanout, and it's yours, my friend.
Terry, yes, my sentiments exactly, whenever I am faced with stepping out the door, any more. Parlous times, insatiable hunger for "growth" = more and more instant-rich just-arrivals in their supersized shitmobiles using the freeway feeder as a through-route between money (other side of the bridge) and safe comfort zone (carefully guarded sanctuary of the hills above and beyond us). Wonderful formula for the creation of the ideal thought-free murican boojie kill zone!
The brilliant twist in this is the fact that -- and I've had to look into these grim stats, and reeled away aghast -- all this continual logjam traffic is relatively recent, increasing in proportion with the grotesque enlargement of the church of money (i.e. tech sector). The city (which by the way times the stoplights to the advantage of motorists, with sensors that permit drivers a nice three-second margin for spontaneous expressive homicide attempts) does periodic traffic counts at a roundabout hub just above us. Between 1980 -- we got here in the early Eighties by the way, same street then was a virtual country lane in comparison w/now -- and 2010 the vehicle count jumped from 30,000 to 110,000 per day. I expect it's c. 2x maybe even 3x that, at present. Concurrently house prices in this charming vicinity have broken through the sanity barrier, with supersonic records (think: Emirates-buyers-only-level) now threatened.
My wife has never driven a car. I quit driving when we were living in W. Marin in 1969. So for us this nonstop mayhem is strictly a spectator event, with all efforts directed to nonparticipation. Alas however the car culture does not permit, in fact punishes, such futile gestures of withdrawal. The mere will to not take part is not a guarantee you won't be left unconscious and bleeding-out upon the American street a half block from your own rickety haunted cobwebby Ed Gorey-themed cowering-station.
And by an underinsured motorist, yet. Little known facts as to which vast insurance giants got that way by colluding with human nature to promise all Californians a happy automotive tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, come what may... well, I'm sure nobody would be interested.