18.5.08

Episode 1: Sleeping On Front Porches

I pull in at 2.30 AM
From Gate 6
Seat 37D
Where passenger baggage must not contain radioactive material.
Up Route 116 to South Mandelle Hall,
Back to school. Ring the bell. Walking blues.
Past Lower Lake where nothing stirs
Except for lampost flicker outside Village Commons.

12.00 Meet Katie for lunch outside Art Museum
Where Hetch Hetchy Canyon 'stimulates inquisitive looking'.
Then we lie on Skinner Green with The Bostonians, lip balm and playlist no.1.
Next week we will compare immigration, healthcare, politicians in "Taxi!"
Repeated by sandy-haired boys.
We will stand in the place of American revolutionaries
But do nothing. Instead "Where you guys heading?" and the promise
One day we'll be out in the rain and suddenly everything'll change.

Minuteman Express. Amherst Bookshop
To be [re] born in Dickinson's doorway.
We hold hands with an Amherstian girl talking of lacklustre education
And friends that we hardly know.
Thursday 13th 1.30 PM Meet Sarah and Emily in Northampton
Ice-cream with a Rock n' Roll twist as fools fall in love over american pie
Outside the winters are too cold and the summers are over too soon
So today and always I will carry my clear plastic umbrella.

To the greenhouse for a slice of your soil,
To the Bookmill for a taste of your choco beer,
To Skinner Mountain for a picnic on a cliff face,
To Hangers for a concoction of short skirts, sticky chickens and chardonnays.
Yours is the first face that I saw.
Back to hers, to dozy lightening, to misty drinks
Where my mac slowly endures intoxication.
Walk with me Suzy Lee.


Saturday 15th 11.20 PM lit up snowmen mark out your door
We're here to live and swing on front porches
I don't know you
But parties we like
Show and tell, free beer and music frothing out of basements.
Playlist no.1 notes contradiction:
Getting by just fine here on minimum wage
But being here too long, it's time to move.

I change in the back of your truck
And end up asleep on your porch
.

1 comment:

Anna said...

Karen this is so good! I love it!