A Vast Edit.

Trenton Makes, The World Takes

I

When you stare at your concrete enough
You can be fooled into thinking it’s natural:
There are grain lines, and imperfections,
There’s a greenish mess of moss seeping through

But you are dead; the moss acting like ancient adhesive
You conceded defeat long before I left, but
The neon lights shine on
Like Sirens signaling a future jagged demise.

I am Ulysses: I will stuff my ears with wax and pass through safely.
I am dulled: travellers are grey, their thoughts beiged.
“Progress on all fronts,” the Trentonian says, blind to
Twenty year-old temporary partition walls and people alighting
On rusted tracks, in wood-paneled carriages.

The Garden State is rotting;
Melting jaundiced pumpkins and sepia-tone tomatoes,
Vast open fields of bitumen.

Trenton Takes, The World Makes:
Like some ageless crevice, ingesting life
So slowly that no-one notices,
Until they can no longer feel their hands
To change the channel.


II


I traveled five hundred miles today to find
Some morsel of exuberance;
A simpler time, when we had coloured toilets,
Communists were the devil and
Everyone ducked and covered and bled red and white and blue.

Thank you
for traveling the
GARDEN STATE PARKWAY

From the sky, you look like grey and yellow spaghetti,
More tarmac than verdant heartland.
But is this not the heartland now?
In a country fully fueled by desire;
Sustenance is assumed
Demand is for what reminds us of elsewhere.


Trenton Fakes, The World Shakes.

I can't say I knew what I was doing.

Rime Dispersé

Je ne veux pas viver aux États-Unis en plus.
Je ne peux pas voir plus qu’au fond de mon nez.
Quand tous le monde auront passé entre mes mains
J’écrirai avec la force d'une génération.
L'océan aquamarine se lavera mon visage, et
J'espère pouvoir retourner chez moi.

Mon corps est un cage, qui m’a dit:
“Défense d’espoir, abaissez-vous!”
Mais il y a quelque chose qui résiste –
Peut-être c'est désir, ou un esprit sacré – mon Dieu!
Qui me permet de tolérer des blandes et des blondes,
Et penser que je peux vous parler à vous:

Réunissez ensemble, mes amis, et gagnez pour vous-mêmes:
Nous, sur l'extérieur, avons nos propres avis.