obsolescence

It’s like a sixth sense

depending on how you count,

the way you feel it in gearbox,

the way you take the tension, you hear

it in the engine, that almost

right smack there in your mouth

organ grinder out of tune

that taste you admit you miss,

the song as it laps itself

a sound like a lonesome light,

the war crackle humming from

some ancient shelf in your mind.

Here it was the dance of dust motes 

the morning window and the bedroom closet,

a Disney train on the wall

that shifted in capered in the dark.

Lightning storms of static

beneath the blue blanket

dragging sparks through my hair.

Hidden reading in secret by flashlight 

because I had to know 

what happened next. Rain and stars

and animals, only a stranger to

every friend. I don’t know 

what stuck with you. I don’t know 

which parts are gone.

It is only over now in the after,

past tenses and wild swings.

Collapsed into antiquity,

apocryphal volumes and ancestral tales,

eras and ages vague islands,

hairstyles and girlfriends and

long dissertations on

why my boss is dumb. 

Over and over the fading lore 

passes through the wounds and

aches of the old ape,

life’s cruel slapstick and

cereal in front of the TV,

something sweet and easy,

cartoons and troubled comforts as

the world forgets me, then 

remembers me too well.