On
a city street
strangers go their own way.
Preoccupied people
carry out instructions
like ants.
A siren screams with urgency
in wedged traffic
among agitated horns.
In gutters and trash cans
rats compete for garbage
A prostitute bickers for a better
price.
A jack hammer breaks up silence
pigeons coo like mind chatter
a homeless man in a drunken
stupor
staggers past the building
where he was raised as a child.
From behind him,
steam hisses from a sewer
like dragon smoke.
Across the street
a crowd gathers about a juggler
who juggles the past and the
future.
Distracted,
he drops the present on the
pavement
like a miscarriage.
But in the center
of the noise pollution drone
and congested scenery,
there's a curious blend of surrender
and control
occurring.
A mime submits to nothing there,
trapped in a box
like a participant sacrificed
under an Aztec sun,
heart carved out, still beating
in the hands of a priest
who offers intent.
At the alter
I watch black and white faces
perform a ritual of silence.
Boundaries decay like the orbit
of a planet
that crashes into it's sun.
No muse,
just the news.
There's no time
to wait for a cool breeze in
Hell...
There's space...
where nothing gets wasted and
nothing dies.
In the city,
silence breeds forever,
I see
while listening to mimes.