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a poem by James H. Duncan (1 of 2)
Mecca
bus station solitude in the emptiness of Albany concrete
after a long bus ride north from the great Mecca,
the supposed Mecca, the nothing Mecca New York
so bitter remote that even passing souls on the street
have no meaning nor intention to mean anything
toward each other, and even in packed bars and cafes
there is little to relate in the eyes as hands thaw and coffee
scours our insides, so tired of old New York and all those
pristine hipsters, elegant and crude, shouting nothing
at the top of their golden lungs fumbling in the supposed
Mecca, the great golden Mecca where it just doesn't matter
anymore, and maybe it never did. maybe it is the action
in the traveling soul that matters, not the mouse-trap housing
stacked up sky-high, adorned with famous names and graffiti,
maybe these things don't matter as much as the moving word
that can't sit still, even in the bookshelves of the New York
Public Library's marble-guarded mausoleums—they dance
in there right off the shelves and down the throat, mix meld
make it with the coffee down there and burst out onto the fleet
of highways leading to Philly and Chicago and Cleveland and
San Francisco and Denver and yes even Albany, that little gray
town where fun goes to die in the wintertime and love hovers oh
so gently in the treeline sky, far from the wide concrete downtown
pit where the greyhound station hunkers and hides from the bright
lights and high-horse greatness of that beautiful dead Mecca night
after a long bus ride north from the great Mecca,
the supposed Mecca, the nothing Mecca New York
so bitter remote that even passing souls on the street
have no meaning nor intention to mean anything
toward each other, and even in packed bars and cafes
there is little to relate in the eyes as hands thaw and coffee
scours our insides, so tired of old New York and all those
pristine hipsters, elegant and crude, shouting nothing
at the top of their golden lungs fumbling in the supposed
Mecca, the great golden Mecca where it just doesn't matter
anymore, and maybe it never did. maybe it is the action
in the traveling soul that matters, not the mouse-trap housing
stacked up sky-high, adorned with famous names and graffiti,
maybe these things don't matter as much as the moving word
that can't sit still, even in the bookshelves of the New York
Public Library's marble-guarded mausoleums—they dance
in there right off the shelves and down the throat, mix meld
make it with the coffee down there and burst out onto the fleet
of highways leading to Philly and Chicago and Cleveland and
San Francisco and Denver and yes even Albany, that little gray
town where fun goes to die in the wintertime and love hovers oh
so gently in the treeline sky, far from the wide concrete downtown
pit where the greyhound station hunkers and hides from the bright
lights and high-horse greatness of that beautiful dead Mecca night
© by James H. Duncan
Gutter Eloquence Magazine ~ Issue #9 ~ May 2010
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