Pulled into Juiz de Fora just before sundown.
Motorcycle cowboy again.
Like days of old.
But it’s different somehow now.
After Narcisa everything is different.
Like the guy who swallowed the Red Pill in The Matrix.
Things will never be the same.
Why did Cigano cross the road?
Good or bad. It is what it is.
Open road, wide skies.
Rolling freight train.
Wistle blowing.
Rolling by
outside the ancient hotel window by the station now.
Minas Gerais. History. Mystery.
The Freemason Lodge looms large just down the street.
Don’t get me started.
How many lifetimes to build this crippled matrix of lies and dreams?
Tomorrow fix the bike and back on the road.
Cold. Long. Lonely. Inevitable.
Rolling on another 300 kilometers up to Belo Horizonte.
What’s at the end of the long long road?
More road, to be sure.
Just for today, I’m on it.

Sitting at the usual table by the waves.
Yellow plastic meditation refuge
Alone by the sea.
Far end of Copacabana.
End of the day.
2009
End of the world.

Soon the sea will rise
to consume the streets, buildings, city.
And it will all be sand and dust and ruin.
Again.
The end.

But for now there’s yellow plastic tables
and a chair for me to sit in
facing the waves.
For now there’s this beach side shack.
There’s tourists with cameras and shopping bags.

Here they come now.
They come and they sit at tables all around me now
sitting, talking, drinking.
Cute green alcoholic drinks.
Oblivion with fancy names.
Sitting by the sea that will soon consume us all.
The eternal rolling graveyard of aimless souls.
Now they come and sit beside me here,
chattering away frantically like noisy blind monkeys.

I sit here at my table by the waves and they come and come.
First a group of four, then six, then more
chattering wildly in their frantic tourist tongues.
On vacation. Holiday. Break. Escape.
A weekend walkabout away from offices
and schools
and jobs
and slave yards
in far off lands
like here.

And they are hungry like ants.
Pink and chubby, bored and boring
overworked overfed overpaid
overwhelmed.
Overwhelming.

Fast and frantic, desperate
and talking
talking
all talking at once all around me now.
Talking talking.
Saying nothing.
Nothing at all.

And here they come now
swarming all around me now
talking and swarming and drinking their drinks.
Smiling and chattering
in a hurry to relax.
Sitting and talking
they drink their drinks
and they shout at each other
like dogs barking at the lonely sea of night.

And even though I understand their human language
and the noises
rolling off their slippery pink gringo tongues,
I don’t understand a fucking word they say.
They are as foreign to me as space aliens.
They are of another tribe of beings.

I move my yellow plastic chair a few feet away
to the edge of the boardwalk.
I turn my back to their intruder chatter
I face the waves whose language I understand.
I contemplate the rolling crash of the tide.
As the chattering insect voices behind me
are absorbed into the matrix of the night.

Soon the vendors and beggars and peddlers
and hustlers and whores arrive
attracted to the crowded tables
like so many fruit flies
hovering above a bunch of overripe bananas.

I hold my ground in my yellow plastic chair
facing the waves.
I fend off the first wave of ragged roving
predators.
Soon the black vibration of my resounding
NO
takes shape in the air around me
and spreads like a mist of protection
and they all leave me
alone.

Soon the human traffic of day’s end will subside.
They will drink their drinks and then move on.
And with them the rats of poverty
who suck at their shadows
like drifting vampire cats in heat.

And then it will be just the waves again
and the occasional solitary drifting soul.
Like me.

Gone at last like a garbage truck wind
with all their urgent hungry human frenzy.

Now I bring my yellow plastic chair
back to its proper place
away from the sand.
Now I can sit alone in peace
once more
waiting for the seas to rise
and swallow us all up again
and again and again.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009

A light
lit
seen from the street…
Not Piercing The Darkness
or Shining Down On
anything

Just a light
Just there
somewhere…
Kansas City.

“Why there?” she asked
and I said
“Why not?”
“That’s ok, too”
said the Truck Driver
as if to voice the opinions
of the truck.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009.

toot toot an idiot’s horn

an ambulance screamed by.

the people stared for a moment

gripping hard their candied pleasure

dirty warm ice cream

sticky hands.

An ugly sight i thought, as i walked away

up the street penniless and ice creamless.

the idiot followed me tooting his horn all the

way to the edge

by Jonathan Shaw

The first time I saw the kid, he was sitting in the front row of the smoking section of the midnight AA meeting downtown. The only reason I even noticed him at all when I walked in the door was probably because he was sitting there, legs sprawled across the floor, leaning back in a precariously arrogant slouch in the hard metal chair where I usually sat.

I’d showed up a few minutes late for the meeting, so I could hardly blame this odd looking newcomer for occupying what I’d always thought of unconsciously as ”my seat.” So without giving it another
thought, I quietly stepped over his long legs and Gucci shoes and slid into the chair beside him. There was a certain tacit animal-like acknowledgement of my presence which belied his arrogant demeanor. Just the slightest, almost imperceptable little nod of respect which would have been all but invisible if it hadn’t registered itself as a predator’s response to another one’s presence.

He sat there the rest of the meeting tapping his Gucci-clad feet on the dirty wooden floor and drumming nervously on his knees with twitching, slender, carefully manicured fingers which seemed to dance to some manic little tune that played inside his head.

Every ten minutes or so he would suddenly lurch up from the chair as if propelled by some unseen force more compelling than gravity itself and stomp noisily and crookedly across the room like a demon on some unholy mission, only to come crash landing right back into the chair a few minutes later. Then he’d sit there some more, fidgeting and slouching precariously, almost painfully in the chair, twitching like a big cat with too many fleas. This kid had some serious ants in his pants. That much was clear.

But being at an AA meeting, and an after-hours one at that, I just shrugged philosophically as I remembered the old saying. “We’re all here cuz we ain’t all there.” So i just sat there listening to the other last gasp alkies ‘’sharing,” rambling and spewing about this and that for the remainder of the meeting. Mostly I just sat there basking in that strange protective warmth of being in a room full of fellow shell-shocked survivors, breathing in the collective air of gratitude and faith we all somehow shared there, having all gotten a second chance at life. It was a good warm feeling and I hardly noticed the kid again as he sat there twitching and chain-smoking nervously in the
seat next to mine.

by Jonathan Shaw

When I felt the evil
the sting of the whisky
the pain
her effort
to leave me jibbering
and defunct
i killed her
snapping teeth and clumsy reptilian hiss jungle combat
hands on throat
killed
dead
darkness
numb..

and when I came to
i found her dead in the bed
beside me
no longer warm and grimy
no longer alive with battle
warmth, screaming, breathing
no longer
alive.
Dead.
Like a flattened dry snake in the road
she was
DEAD…
far away and faded
like a yellowed snapshot
deserted in the halls of time
like
a frozen birthday party
rats streaming over the cake
dead
cold
blue
silent
forever…

by Jonathan Shaw

damnfool rain came pourin like jackpot
inna my life today

burned-out windshield visions
of melting tires
and cities lost

Rainman sez: More Tomorrow
Ballgames cancelled
Meetings Postponed
Communications Down—
children lost catsndogs

the old man is snoring