SECOND RIVER - 1769

222. SECOND RIVER - 1769:

People walking around like scoundrels zombies mute like lambs giants made out as pygmies and everything all mixed up - Lola Falana lookalikes on the Number 112 bus - leaving from anywhere to get where it's going - guys with turbaned heads talking intensely while they wait on the curb and the looking out the looking out for the bus that's sure to come and sure it will evermore and along the stairways where now only weeds and sumac grow no one anymore takes note of the things of the old days - markers and plaques and history in the mix of what-once-was : the waterfront church by the old ferry port and the depot which once stored grain and is no more and the waterfront too is no longer a waterfront at all but paved like a highway and two levels high and ringed with roadway ramps and weeds and junk and no one there can tell me a thing about the history of the soil and the dirt and the abandoned graves and old pieces of fence and the ancient sign says 'Second River 1769' which was an old settlement by the old reformed church and everything now is empty and dead and hurting my head as I just sit to think and watch the Hispanic congregation come sauntering out from the next church over - some storefront contraption with no name and a big Spanish banner and it's all material for nothing to me and livid as can be and inauthentic too - and the officer nearby turns and says : 'we've buried the old with the dead - we've buried the old with the dead...' and I turn my head from him and just start muttering 'no difference to you I'm sure no difference to you...' and we walk apart as if a thousand years of human consciousness does not divide us : he is walking with rational logic and reason and supposed law on his side and me on the other with sundered and twisted dreams of sedition and revolt illogic and explosive creative thought ready to tear his world apart - the two things never mix of course : the engulfing flames and the water which puts them out - one or the other overtakes the moment and it's like that apparently with the wild grasslands of the mind too and the fight is endless the wailing wall of terror remains steadfast and nothing ever changes in the static stand-off the world makes of our mess : I hear the highway rumble with its nearby cars and I see the ragged trees still sleeping for their winter just now turn from slumber to some idea of awakening LIKE the power just the same of every dream and thought of conquest that's ever passed my mind - and stopped to take root and taking root stayed to blossom and blossoming grew.
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And it is all like a mystery to me too : staggering around and dazed beneath 30-story buildings perpendicular to the sky and every illicit awning in the world seems to be on the roofs with umbrellas parasols lemonades picnic tables and lamps too ('my my how these people can live!') but WHY WOULD YOU ? do that can't you ever stop to think : the tiny Spanish guy underneath his car changing brakes or changing oil in the gutter at the curb and his loose-bottomed feet stick out from the car and stretch out to the sidewalk where people walk around them - two strange things with no place to go - and across the way some doorman silently watches with a whistle in his mouth and then just yells : 'hey you ! you can't do that here ! get the hell off the curb!' but ALAS nobody even cares and no one looks around and it's always like that anyway - natural dogs and natural oblivion outside the doors of the Natural History Museum.