The hill is not as spooked anymore
The hill with the factory perched upon it
Staring down the questioned town
Riddled with gentle craftsmen
For whom making mistakes
Was their breath
See the light go on in a short room
In the factory, a single glowing bulb
Spackling yellow-hued light on the forgotten office
Punchcards strewn about by toppled server space.
It is enough to get the town crowded around the city center
Toeing the sidewalk cracks with brio.
The weavers had won a war with their fathers
Fifty years ago and collected for their remaining pensions
the spoils of hate
For their remaining pensions
They replaced their pants when the moon
Turned over in the night regarding its pillow
As another strange visitor with queer sounds, motions
Disruptive to the limpid rhythm of rest.
They won a war with fate, and cauterized their fingers
Against the oncoming hatred.
The librarian saw it coming, indexed volumes specifically
Yet was promptly ignored at the café.
They won the war with fate and suffered their losses
In the shadowed marbles of the usurers dome,
Tabulating up and down the street,
Looking across the sheets to see their wonderful losses
Accumulate as a cloud storm fidgeted with the moon’s currency.
There are no craftsmen now on the hill.
Evictions posted and everyone went downhill
Towards the bar, to have a century’s laugh
At histories migration.
The ancient nightmare caught up with them
Like a beam in the sky honing on heat blooms
In military surveillances.
It knew where to find them, never really lost sight of them
Through the fog and frogs breath of tiny island leaps.
Nameless, horrendous.
The great heaping mass of a quarantined town
The dead piled high in a wheel barrow
Paraded in town as a victory for the elders,
The borrowers infecting the groundswell, interest
Bleeding into the water table, the air. The forests’ breath
Sprays out webbing between two thin leaves that
Hang discordantly in embrace, waiting for the ant to come
And cut them free, liberated to get on with histories tussle.
And as the water payments were mailed monthly
To the brothers, the monks sat in the library
Querying old databases, reading the looms for any signs
Of digital deliveries, quorums, decisions in history
That could be recalled and examined for a simple way out,
Or at least a preparation for the virus and its symptoms.
The cough begins, the fifty years war rages
With group shouts and tantrums of dust,
Tank columns enlivening towns
That now are to be administered by the good sirs,
The ballplayers, the managers and apparatchiks.
The meek go on collecting taxes for the waterways,
The boat must be led across by twine
And the rocks are felt for by a blind boatsmen,
The permanent mate.
And here the town daily addressing hair with a comb
Readying for work and reaching for keys in peanut butter dreams
And silent slopes. The joints creak ten years too soon
And another lease is originated, a credit sold,
Children taking into the gloaming.
And the lease is piled in the marble room
Ledgers redacted into an inner sanctum’s hush and attention.
Usurers have not enjoyed this much fame since Genoa
And the adamantine wars, the turpentine decisions
Spiraling through acres of desert like a slope,
Winded and spun like cloth around a stick
Dipped in fuel, frazzled with firelight.
Here comes the neon man, screwing his bolts into place
To announce the new partnership between history and decline.
Image Source: Dominic on Flickr
