::: SKIDROW PENTHOUSE :::

We rode the bus with the tom-tom thieves until the sun went out
Jasmine all in bloom among forest fires
While the dancers dissolved in their drinks
A new sort of star shone through it all like those
White egrets that follow the cattle
Those lulled conversations half asleep
That arrive with a sort of instability in the weather
A man can drive so far south
Far from all the perfumes of mirages
The prison beneath the lake all aglow with lightning
And children among the baobobs
And the sky’s atlas is completely dark
Here where the compass needle’s lost
It’s only a signal for the ants to carry away
The bouquet with Chinese lanterns set adrift
In the night by the Southern Cross
No matter which way they believe here
The hitchhikers crawl from some place beneath the sand
Beneath the movements of green seasons
Beneath the midnight cascade where the years
Bury their unending staircase inside you
Tomorrow’s shadows hold midday captive
In amber like the daydreams of the night fishermen
They’ve stolen the fortuneteller’s bait
They’re searching for the tombs of the sun
They’re searching for the world to become as little children
It’s always now
Mysterious as evaporating birds
Making common cause with all the stains of the world
Because of a strange tug-of-war across the salt flats
Where our desiccated hearts breathe like smoking toads
Where the gavel comes down on glass skulls bursting
A thunderstorm of sunbirds
escaping into the temple
That is your Saturday morning laughter
Astrological matters are resolved
With the sunrise mist from the ditches
The ditches that stash the catburglar’s jewels
The ditches that are so bad with names
The mud from those ditches is the plaster of heaven
The quicksand of paradise
Where I sink beating the great kettle drum
Of life and death
And the day after

Tracy Thomas