Your Funeral on the Platform

A wild old woman chants some violent magic
at the edge of the platform in Osaka,
her urban hermit hand ticking off invisible boxes
as she shouts into her folded paper--
some racing form or schedule of times
or other tiny-columned text.

I imagine she is conducting a funeral
for you and other ghosts that ride the Loop Line.
She's plucking the pains and hatreds from your flesh
like so many bee-stings in a soul,
extracting the poisons you're to leave here
with us. The stuff we'll grind our teeth to nubs on.
The stuff we'll mix with your ashes
to mold you as our mud-man and prance around
like you are worthy of such dumb reverence.

But you are no longer you.

And, so, in Tennoji, this visitation
by a white-striped moth flapping and flopping
its way to the heel of my left shoe, makes me
love you all anew. To meet you
in these million frazzled edges worth protecting.
I lift my heel off the floor and give you
the chance to climb beneath, giving me the chance
to grind your fragile thorax back to ash
and dusty wings. If I so choose.

I don't.

And all of us here on the train smile
as you flash and crash off towards the light bulb
but lose your way
back out onto the platform.



by jerry gordon
6.21.06

Strangers in the Sky

But for the length of now,
we are strangers.


Riding aluminum clouds,
from the sky we have fallen
into these canyons
of stone and steel and 10,000 right angles.

Up above,
the sky still glows
and here between what's far and near
we meet and glance the chance
of friendship within strangers' eyes.

And somehow, something opens
wide enough for the sky
to descend amidst us
and fill the space that once seemed empty.

We fall from and to and through the sky.

And when I see your face within a crowd,
what is it that now flashes recognition?
How do I now know you?
It is as though you have something
for or from me--
some invisible possession that's been exchanged.
Some buried treasure, which together
we complete the map to.

Arriving and departing,
we pass
on opposite sides of buildings,
leaving our belongings
in each other's pockets.

We are strangers,
but for the length of now.



by jerry gordon
6.4.06
From Dog to Dog