I thought it was criminal that
passenger buses didn't provide
remotes to change channels in fellow
travelers brains or, at least, mute
certain conversations before they spread
like a fatal contagious disease as this one was.
I thought John's death had been untimely
but he was spared a viewing of his clones'
body swathed in funeral blacks, a mouth
full of broken, rotting teeth and dull,
insipid eyes floating in an emulsion
of putrid dreams contained behind
black lensed, gold rimmed granny glasses.
Music died on the way to those chapped
lips but words flowed on, endlessly stuck
in the cracks between warped grooves;
a tape of a day in a meaningless life
playing backward and forward at two
different speeds all the way to Albany
and beyond.
