Curry in the Airwaves June 6, 2025 at 1:30 pm
(Neon decay, salvation and ruin)
I found him tethered to a cart,
wheels screeching Western Ave,
a kingdom built from mattress springs
and methadone’s sharp flame.
“I’ve got to be somewhere,” he grinned,
though nowhere but the curb claimed him—
his eyes, two coins tossed down a well,
still ringing as they dimmed.
He dragged me to his canvas cave,
where curry ghosts clung to the air,
and sang to a symphony of spoons
on bleach-bottle snare.
The music whores (all lace and teeth)
slipped rehab through his veins,
but I, too numb to bring him light,
just cursed the dirt-stained rain.
We push the world in shopping carts—
past saints who don’t look down,
where televisions preach static hymns
to asphalt’s thorny crown.
The screen he’d salvaged, cracked and mute,
bloomed blue against the grime—
a fractured moon to crown his dirge,
its glow outshining time.
I should’ve praised the chaos spun
from wire, sweat, and lack,
but choked on truths I couldn’t swallow:
“Your tent stinks. No, I take it back.”
He laughed—a sound like shattered glass—
and tuned his radio spine,
broadcasting hunger’s frequency
through every rusted line.
The whores returned with contracts signed
in counterfeit concern,
while I traced roads not on his map
where fires never burn.
We push the world in shopping carts—
through cracks where streetlamps bleed,
and genius, once a feral spark,
becomes the thing we feed.
Now fame’s a needle’s eye he threads
with chords I can’t unhear,
and I’m counting a curb-side star
that fades but won’t disappear.
His curb TV still haunts my steps,
its static lullaby
a requiem for what I moved
but couldn’t classify.