IN ALL COUNTRIES HE IS LISTENING

dry and warm and the white folk call it Indian Summer
in Manhattan but there is a cat out in the dark night of rain,
there is an Eskimo trudging through the snow of an analog TV,
there is a man on the street with an empty shopping cart
asking for food, a young woman who was born in Africa now
walks the pavement like a gazelle, and it is said that
the philosopher's stone is the stone the builders rejected
 
we are flying downtown along the East river i am reading my
poem to a Pakistani cab driver because no one in my country
will listen and he tells me it is the same in all countries, but
in this eye-dropper of freedom, in this bastion of propaganda,
this peep-hole of We The People that is America he is listening,
a Muslim is listening to my English in a yellow taxi with thick
padded seats and a wall of glass, he is listening
 
on the fortieth anniversary of Kerouac's passing Jack is safe in
heaven alive or else he has reincarnated as a Pakistani cab
driver who is listening while weaving through the lives of
multitudinous humans, while telling me of the plight of his
people in the country where he is from, how the outsiders
who seem to help also want to steal the power and i tell him of
the American Indians, the First Peoples, the Indigenous Ones,
and of how sad it is the same in all countries
 
we are driving through the fashion show that is New York City
where the women and drag-queens dress like male birds
their flamboyant colors, sunlight bouncing off their jeweled
beaks, the strutting of embodied souls through the surreal and
sweaty gray of warm weather in October where a cold beer
offered to a stranger brings a rainbow to his face
 
i could keep reading and we could drive all night, boss,
like Sam said to Rick in Casablanca, but the meter is clicking
and the price is high, the price is high to get someone to listen
but we keep talking, keep reaching across the boundaries of
countries that are as flimsy as a spider web in a tornado, we
keep talking and listening because it is the same in all countries

---

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III). Mankh is a frequent guest poet and essayist on Axis of Logic. He is a writer, small press publisher, and Turtle Islander. His work has been published worldwide and his most recent book of poems is Adam Had No Earthly Navel. You can contact him via his literary website: www.allbook-books.com

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