wing-tips

long time sitting in an airport --- dallas / fort worth
without a formal thought to hold on to
'cept those retrospective glances you take
around the room
still looking for what was lost your last time out
the disconnect
the only lasting emotion that surfaces
grays and blues of terminal carpeting
a million feet
the dusty browns of a texas summer
pretty much sums up your perspective
the future
the broken writers and their slow deaths bukowski called it
leaves you
without definition

then there's abilene
those bastard city planners managed to tear down
damn near every historic building in that town
in less than a generation
probably some twits selling out their last flair of conscience
to appease the power brokers
what right did they have
robbing the cowpokes and roughnecks
of their buildings
where the grit from the street
still had life
and those old neon lit saloons
old men and fire escaped old hotels
pitting the gamblers against the odds of finding a warm
body to bed down with
the kids will never know what that’s all about
now that the bank & insurance tightasses have taken their place

well this plane finally made it airborne
filled with the so-called achievers
bullshit salesmen
most of them going back to their ‘burbs
racquetball courts golf courses
where the freeways gnarl the brain
aggression rules
and a few of us escape with the clouds
looking for that spark
in a metropolitan wing-tip night

--- e b bortz

(published in split w*sky, 2003)