Broken Biscuits (A day in the life)

IT STARTS WITH

jeans on the tile floor

dusty knees like powdered sugar

ready to walk through the window

into the sunlight saturday

attached to hangover headache

past the polish faces antique faces

with a stunned look like they don’t understand the joke

the shopkeeper hosing off the sidewalk

Puerto Rican kids chasing each other past crossing guard cops

Drunks making paper bag morning prayers

then down to the subway

everyone pretending to sleep

or head in book gently swaying with the track

thinking about loneliness

and grocery list lips

under sickly fluorescent shine

stop and out with the herd

everyone flashes by too quickly

to count for anything

up syrup filth steps

to pancake mud street

I’m glad to mean nothing

another rat in the garbage

like all the others

money from jeans

phone into jeans

walk signals

disinterested foreigners

sitting in folding chairs on the street

wishing for younger women

or their father to be alive again

for just one more old country day

when things were cleaner than this

dont walk anymore

then back into tunnel like ants

home to the neighborhood

the old polish faces still waiting for the punchline

close the front door and my mailbox falls off the wall

jeans on the tile floor

ghosts haunt the hall

-Joel

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