signals (updated)

SIGNALS

Get lost and be guided

Obscurity wouldn't be that green,
yellow and red without the signs
that read Holiday Inn and McDonald's
and the lamp posts
paving the windy road
to the entrance of the deserted mall.
They make the bricks of the steps look brighter
almost pink.
The green bulbs planted
in the grass make it look greener and phosphorescent.
A tailless cat with no direction trots
and passes them.

They can turn my blood cold
but not this one,
it passes by with its disguting
anatomy and dirty hair,
it mews and disappears
on the parking lot of the hotel.

Silence is not really silent either,
the white speakers above
the sliding doors of the entrance
play elevator music.
Cheap chords and howling saxophones
swell on repetitive choruses.
I remember that i heard
Neil Young played
through those same grids once,
at the time i was working there.
I realize i was tapping my toes
on the rail.

Then,
in a second,
the speakers start blowing a siren.
An instant of silence,
An instant of noise...

After that an announcement
to evacuate the shopping center.
Just a test of the system:
it is late on a sunday night,
everything is closed
and there are no ghosts between these walls.
The music resumes with african bongos.

I sit there,
the security camera is watching me,
a half-globe embedded
in the pearly white of the plastic roof.
I am looking at the city:
a black sea with hundreds of buoyants lights
well-anchored underneath
but pitching in the distance,
shy and undetermined to fight obscurity,
they are parallel sisters to the stars,
the millions of burning icebergs
and silver nebulas,
are separated from them only by some clouds
and the rotundity of the world.

A transparent wrap rolls and
twinkles at the lights,
three quarters of a price tossed on the steps,
it rolls towards the trash can
as if it had a plan,
moved by the breeze,
_____the breath from the giant lungs
_____of the cosmic fish.



Goes out to A.