Configurations

After time off from the morning
moving mountain of the city week,
we wait around the late night T.V.
adverts, so hell bent on getting
everyone to know.
While every show is just a reconfiguration
of the old ones that we thought
went off the air when all the world decided
it just didn’t care.

The sale is over now and the shopping
carts and plastic cutout displays
have been stained over
by the constant pouring sunlight.
Restaurant main rooms
are full of strangers forced
together by the table cloths that hold them
in their seats like thread leviathans
that swim through open air.

People losing people all compare the pain
in lines out by the pay phone
at the bus station where the places left to run
are all in green up on the board but blinking out.
They don’t care if they make it
because there’s no one where they’re going
left to see, and so to them the only place
to be is looking over everything,
without a single thought of coming down.