Poem for the Day Off

I sit watching two remote controls
with steady, colorful buttons--
one is gray the other black--
I can't take my seedy eyes off them,
or off the couch that is so further
away from the front of this damaged house
(there are chills whispering to my feet,
to my fingertips and knuckles, in a dance
with the basement noises booming--the water
of the washer and the air of the dryer
moving clothes in cyclical patterns, disgust--)

And all is further away from me though
I sit in it, all of it, a tiger's pounce,
clean old clothes on and hanging like skins,
mental taps into computer concepts, thinking
about black females as passing for mailmen,
and the imminent snowfall that I'm sure
will be flooding the air as soon as I step,
outside or wherever the damned go to these days.

There is a certain slant of sensibility
to be had while working two jobs, dragging along
one's feet that feel dented and bemused by
the cheapest footwear available in this dirty city.

I imagine we will sit and stare at one another
until that final push in one direction
or another, with fear colored like blood,
the fear tensing up the sides of the face,
nightmarish impossibilities, family and matrimony
fast approaching like bullets meant for the gut--

Do not listen to those harlots telling
you to wash your face, telling you not to hear
all the other voices that will carry you away--
do not listen to the bird peeping in majesty--
and do not heed the words spat by the gunslingers
down the block, who will throw sand in faces
and wear the masks of hawks brown and battered
if only to change the day's turn of the cards--

Two blank remote controls sit on the table
and they are dead without use--dead, solid
instruments that have batteries just inside,
underneath hard pieces of plastic backings.