Page 5 - No 2
P. 5
38
Spring 1988 Hobo Jungle Page5
I POEIRY
Monday Morning with Mr. Eliot KALI of the IRT
Like sand continually eroded Inside she sits, dark goddess
by the expected sea wrapped in a brown tarpaulin,
Room 612 is filled with a wave all of her treasures held in a torn black bag
of noisy chattering students. with broken handles ...
The scent of chalk dust glaring from glazed and heavy-lidded eyes
mixes with the fetid smell under her purple headband,
of someone's leftover lunch muttering at the empty seats around her.
in the wastebasket since Friday. The train reels through steel-girded blackness,
Facing front palms leaning past shadowed fi res etched on remote platforms
gu
on the desk the sun glinting under bare bulbs.
off his glasses he surveys the room. Three young toughs grin at each other from the far end;
"Good morning," they drone lethargically she spits them on the floor.
settling into their seats. Scent of her anger hangs in the fetid air;
Before his eyes the nightmare begins. the people back away.
The classroom is slowly transformed Kali the Destroyer,
into a mausoleum of bad poetry. chewing pieces of colored cloth
Along the lichen-covered walls spewed like a wet gauntlet,
chalk disintegrates like decaying bones marking her space.
forming neat piles of trite images.
Books crumble to the touch We crash to a stop.
leaking streams of shredded cliches. Unseen hands fling open the doors;
The typewriter sits paralyzed she watches the crowd push out.
in grammatical error I step over the void, glance sideways down the iron length,
atop the metal filing cabinet. its row of red lights like bleeding sentinels.
Graffiti slides off desk tops Upstairs in the pale gray afternoon
oozing pools of verbosity melting snow runs rivulets,
on the cold damp floor. carrying things we thought we had discarded.
The twisted hands of the clock Water backs up at every corner;
have mangled its face there is no place to go ...
leaving it as ambiguous In the window of a novelty shop
as a mixed metaphor. a rubber heart writhes and beats.
Rows of cadaverous students -Doris Henderson
like silent tombstones
with blank-verse faces Punks
stare at the stuffed pedant.
"Let's tui:n to The Hollow Men G od!...here they come
on page forty-five," he whispers With all their
in a perfunctory manner. Internal dispute,
-lames P. Quinn In all their ill repute ...
Not altogether quite what one would call
Astute
Scufflin' ... sorta short...
Whistlin' -defensively
A Candle Like Life Sorta clean ... sorta white
But oh so very tight...
A candle like life Jivin' and connivin'
Emits drops of wax Lyin' th,eir way
As though tears Down the path
From an upper echelon. To a dubious glory
-Michael T. McSheny
Like
A bunch of horned toads
With,
Spring fever.
-William B. Etheridge
