VIDEO RAIN by JANE MILLER

I am flown to your good side now.
Hiked up like a skirt,
the elevator intones
the cardiac, the cancer ward,
& finally the stroke floor,
because we're always in bed & need to be reminded
we must all carry our seed in our heads like flowers.
The insane staking an identity on high-tech.

It's time to rethink the entire landscape while I still have the body for it.
After years of doing what you've done, you'd do it too, my hero.
As I drag you to one side I wait for the coin to drop
& the video to begin lighting its commands,

ATTENTION this is your stress test,
having to really give all that suffering up,
having it as a guide, not a destination.
Everything is explained in-flight.
I can't stand these elderly stewardesses,

computer tones whispering FORWARD.
At Atlanta International there's a sharp tear of fluorescence
on a poster baby & in eyes that have just come from the freeway
as from a marriage of Mobil & McDonald's.
Getting off at the right time like a drug,

at Terminal C Olympic games are re-run,
@3blank@1 sharks the pool, @3blank@1 scarfs Wheaties.
This is consciousness of 5 P.M. airtime,
where temporarily I live
on the corner of Asamblea de Dios & Destino.
There's my exit, low tide, a last morning on a beach, & this is
it, isn't it, the earth we despaired of with Texaco
refineries & acid rain & you're having to take the hand

of the man in the moon, the black male nurse so clean
& necessary. Like tourists reach for a Holiday Inn in the fog,
as you feel for him I have been really feeling this
country lately deciding what to do next,
conscientiously pressing street crossings
like the accordion which opens into a city,
and the only difference is this really happened.
For everyone, Dad, the days are long,
but it seems like we're always in bed,

sunsets outside quiet silent towns.

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