Taxis Smell Like Midnight

I wonder what my elementary teachers are teaching the daisies –

I wonder what my cat looks like naked,

what the purpose of Lent is when Mother forgives me
after fifteen minutes in my room,

what the opposite of airport might end up being –

I wonder if this is a free-range sausage patty –

whether everything will eventually be written

and why we can’t see that we are just successive generations of neophytes

and that books are baby babble passed down from one beginner to the next –

I wonder why we have to be doomed –

I wonder about the people who think they deserve an afterlife, a deliverer

and the others who jockey for a place in the center of the blink –

I wonder why midtown woke me at 4:00am to stare out at Manhattan’s not-quite-night –

I wonder what that warehouse where the band played was before the pills were popped

and the amps plugged in –

I wonder what the Triangular Shirtwaist girls sounded like as they hit the ground.

I told you we are all beginners

and I wonder why we need more proof of God’s

nonexistence –

I wonder what type of wood George Bernard Shaw would have burned on

in the time of Columbus  –

I wonder whether there is more to me than matter –

I wonder how much more matter there is in America than Tibet –

how many more millions of milligrams of depression

how many more millions of McDonald’s toys

how many millions more pounds of pounds –

I wonder why organic food is a novelty in an organic world –

I wonder why the cat always runs away when I walk in the room –

I wonder what I’m going to wonder next

and what I was before I become this momentary combination of atoms telling each other to type –
I wonder when the well will run dry

and what teacher daisies smell like after it rains.

Notes:

Published by

Poetry Super Highway

July, 2011
http://poetrysuperhighway.com/ppa/ppa717.html