Thomas Moody
Alienated Headphones
Brunch is for
Sober people
Looking to get drunk—
A late breakfast is for drunks
Looking to sober up
Too late
A Breakfast at Veselka, then,
and Birgit, the Estonian waitress,
Tells me there are over thirty words for rain
in Estonian.
I don’t know one of them,
Birgit is the only Estonian word I know
And I never quite know how to say it.
Today, it is not raining (why would it be?)
Still, I carry my umbrella—
I don’t want anyone to hold back
On my account, least of all
Something as insistent as the weather.
Earlier, lying on my kitchen floor—
The most cool and candid quarter
Of my apartment (linoleum, so transparent
To your duty!)—a cockroach
Scuttered out from under the fridge
And paused when it saw me.
Fascinating, I thought,
How life recognizes life
No matter how alien its form
It drags us into a sort of
Unified present
Loaded with outcomes: one of which—
Unified or not—is the roach’s
Last ever present, but the sun interrupts
And I am forced to
Enjoy it, envious of the roach
Who enjoys nothing and so is never interrupted
From its living; sympathetic of the
Roach who forages for
Solitude while adhering
To the definition of infestation.
*
Western wind when wilt thou blow
A season so revelatory, so slow,
To rival an entire Neil Young solo
Which is not so much a solo as it is a soliloquy, thankfully, for Neil has
always struggled with lyrics
You know, the writing of words part.
In Ubers the hipsters come and go
Talking of Alexandria Ocasio
Cortez the Killer is the best example of his guitar reprimanding the song
for getting in its way,
For spoiling the moment with the constraints of time—
The song is the product, the music is what is happening, the song must end
so that the music can be heard, and
Already midway through
The introductory two-hundred-and-two second solo, we know
This is both a song
About a lost cause and a lost cause in itself.
*
There is something Bosch-like
To Brooklyn’s gentrification.
A kind of spatial delirium
“Everywhere a flatness filled
With surprises
But no outcomes—no horizons
Here, no pauses, no paths,
No past no future, only the clamor
Of the disparate, fragmentary
Present” (Burgess’ words).
But who am I, holding
My five dollar bodega
Umbrella that often refuses
To close (its true value
Found in the satisfaction
Of never losing it), who
May very well be
Bosch-like in someone else’s
Interpretation of the day,
Just as grotesque only less
Revealing.
No one recognizes me
On Bedford Avenue, I am not
Max Jacob and lack his
Vision, I cannot see Odysseus
Waiting for the L Train, or Dostoevsky
In the barista at Cafe Mogador
Who is burning
My coffee like Porfiry burns
Raskolnikov’s guilt.
But If no one recognizes
Me, all the better, I will wait
For the rain to drown out
The silence of the sky
And then I will unleash
My umbrella and know
That I am known
By the wind, the clouds,
The birds, who always
Know first...
Capitalist ventriloquists!
Walking through
Williamsburg on a weekend
I drown out your hollow echoes
With heavenly ecstasies
Of Elvis’ late gospel albums:
Lead Me, Guide Me;
His Hand In Mine;
I’m Gonna Walk
Dem Golden Stair;
He Knows Just What I Need.
Most everyone does
Ignore me, using wireless headphones
(the cut worm forgives the plough)
Estranged from their I-phones:
Alienated labor, I think,
Though I spend more time
Untangling my headphones
Than I do listening to music
Through them, as I spend
More time untangling
My life than I do living it.
Alcoholics Hieronymus!
Everyone holds an I-phone, or a plant,
Or a dog, but only I hold the answer
To uncertainty!
Ah but how I am jealous of dogs!
To be so comfortable
With being owned.
It looks like today I won’t
Be known, will not open
My umbrella—
My love like an umbrella
That will not close
Nowhere to put it
No one wanting to hold it
Unless they absolutely need it...