The Present Progressive

The Present                                                                                   Progressive

(or… A Story of the Stars)

Dreaming. Thinking.
(But not really.)
Not sleeping.
(But might as well be.) The
talking is just so boring, the
lighting so (astonishingly) dismal, the world just so
big.

“I’ll begin talking about something…
                                                          …won't have time for discussing in detail…”

Drifting from the droning, imagining water
falling hundreds of feet from
some mossy cliff in South America.
Imagining thousands of Hebrew slaves
carrying thousands of tons of sandy-colored stone
to the site of a young god’s grave.

“Are you listening?
Really                                                                                                listening?”

The voice is asking, but rhetorically,
so these lips are staying shut.

“Are you catching the incredible significance
                                                                                          of what I am saying?”

Trying to remember
what he is saying.


Imagining
a painting of a heroic young god
crossing the Potomac. Standing
in a boat. Sailing
through a lucky fog. Except now
it’s changing
from a painting to a movie.

The little boat is rising and
falling. The wooden planks are
creaking as the waves are gently
lapping against the sides.
Lap-Lapping.
      Ta-Tapping.
              Bu-Bumping.
Tapping.
And W. is peering left and right and
back and right and
looking (with love) on his few nervous men.

“And many of the Tories were publicly
                                                                            wondering why those who were
screaming the loudest for liberty were
                                    being so silent about the condition of the American negro!”

Wondering why this isn’t meshing with the
swashbuckling hero in the movie, in the painting.

“By this, they were
                                                              implying that the great patriots were only
fighting for themselves!”

Dreaming that the stars are
watching the earth, great gods and
kings, growing slowly further away,
shifting redder with each passing day.

                                                                                    “It’s all about the Tories!”

That ever-aging thing is yelling.

“Are you starting to grasp the
amazing importance of these loyalists? Is it                                        sinking in?”

God, these stories
are all just so (depressingly)
boring.