The Cheap Seats

A Poem by Douglas Caraballo

Photo by Jordy Meow on Unsplash

You are here nor there
a part of me
this dancing blameless steal ship
Glinting in the evening light

Here

a part of me

moribund and laughless
filling up hewn river banks

Where civilizations
cratered beneath the jungle.

You are here

and there

a part of me.

The whole centrifuge is shuddering
In lampless coffee stained wooden floors

Crumbling beneath nucleonic joy

And alkaline mystic acidic fever pitched
Confusion

slumbers in the upper registers
Of the ionosphere.

The breadths between the lilac trees
Spread thin, spread out, spread like jam


You were here a part of me
Once upon a time
When the backwards was
Still trailing in the cheap seats

When we could rest easy,

as easy as one could rest

In a place like this.