"Madman" carved on air conditioner grates, this mad house.
Steeples of old churches idle against the graying of a Minnesotan sky,
as God eludes us nightly–but humbly.
This is aging.
And is madness,
a treatise of sadness.
All the faces have gone,
and with them are remnants of smiles.
Perhaps they have found themselves ingrained
on the decaying silver screens of the former Guthrie.
There may have been a smile still haunting the floors of the Foshay,
looking down as if on the sidewalk stood a Gatsby
looking up.
Near them are
the topless mermaids guarding Thresher Square
singing as sirens on the first
Wednesday of every month
but are never heard.
Elongated seconds, the distance of thousands
of half-effort smiles,
madden our hardened souls
to the quickening of life
as they were seen disappearing beneath the blue lit bridge.
The people falling
into the river saw a haze of blue instead of white,
foreshadowing the end of their long tunnel
as a river bed with a halo the color of cold.
They may have heard the sirens as the
drones of metal cases and concrete
fell down and followed their ferries–
that this time
actually took them to the afterlife.
Having no token, they themselves drove
and were charged but with lungs full of river.
And here there are dozens,
looking down.
I like the more subtle hint of Minnesota… the sirens on the first Wednesday. It took me a few reads to realize what you were talking about, as Wisconsin sucks.
I still have a hard time with this poem. Although the entire poem is kind of dark, the ending always catches me with its darkness and reality. My “hard time” does not make it bad by any means. I actually think it helps with the power of the poem.
Thank you for reading and replying. I value your input. And I’m glad you saw that–I was hoping to bring back MN more heavily in the second half.