seven eleven

my father once asked me why there are locks
on the doors of the seven elevens of the world,
if they are open twenty-four hours a day
seven days a week.

I told him I didn't know.

how could an eight year old boy know that it is seven eleven's
policy to lock its doors after an armed robbery,
in order to take a complete inventory?

to an eight year old boy of my generation,
seven eleven meant upper-deck hockey cards,
crispy crunch bars and punisher comics.
and lets not forget slurpees,
seven eleven’s trademark beverage.

when I asked my father why it is called
seven eleven, he told me that,
when he was an eight year old boy,
seven eleven meant candies that cost a penny,
soda cans with the old pull-tab top,
and milk in glass bottles.

he said that in the days of one cent candies
and pull-tabs and milk in glass bottles,
convenience meant that one could purchase
these items from early in the morning, to late at night.
from 7am to 11pm.
someone being awake at two in the morning
and in need of such commodities
wasn’t even a concept in the minds of the store’s management,
or anyone else for that matter.

‘the only people awake at that hour
are heathens and homeless,’
said the post-sixties conservative
government skeleton.

but as shiny gadgets got smaller,
cars got bigger,
hockey card collecting
and comic book reading
gave way to the pure nintendo kingdom,
seven eleven ceased to be just that.


it became 24-7.
a… we-never-close-
come-any-time
type of place.
a ubiquitous commodity,
found conveniently, in every developed country,
and in far greater numbers in the under developed ones.


I walked into a 7-11 the other day
and after a brief, but thorough peruse
I could find nothing I wanted.
I guess it struck me rather suddenly;
hockey cards and comic books
and even milk, are all for children.
apart from beer, liquor and cigarettes
(which can be bought anywhere at
anytime by anyone with half a brain)
everything in 7-11 is for children.
children work there and children shop there.
and children spend the billions
that the corporation rakes in each year.

our children
will have children.
who will grow out of seven eleven.
and they, in turn,
will have children that will love it.

in some first literary glances…

I came to notice
that actually knowing
where a poet came from,
and with whom he/she associated with
was of vital importance,
if one did in fact,
want to understand the poet's writing.

personally,
my first glance
was in the beats.
I have long since pronounced
that word as if it were
permanently in italics.

knowing who was writing what,
(and when, and in what city,
at what time,
when which rebellion
of conformity
was being fantasized/actualized,
which numbing tick
was currently
on the face
of civilization’s sickly clock),
is almost, if not of equal significance,
to the poems themselves.

I learned that this knowledge,
(not found in their writings but in their existence in time),
coincides with profound necessity, to
the reading of the writer in question.

When I eventually
came to read Blake,
he was spewing Milton, and Isaiah
and giving the former devilish identification,
that of which,
I failed to identify with.

It was then that I read
Harold Bloom telling me
that, “to first understand Blake,
one must first understand how
Blake read the Bible and Milton.”

How did it feel?

Well I guess it felt
something like throwing
a rucksack on my back,
and watching the
lengthy skies
fade to orange over the badlands,
and like ejecting my thumb
from hand,
and seeing who wants
to help me get
to where I’m going.

welcome

welcome to this,
the last hope of recovery.

don’t worry,
you can't lose your voice
if you never had one.
and by the way,
the lozenges don’t work.

things will be simple here,
and things will be untidy.

things will surly reveal themselves
as time goes on,
in what time does best...
move along.

my mind wanders off,
like a mind wandering off—
and it appears that you’ve
come along for a wander.

there are no rules here,
no annoying video messages
or ladies in pink polyester
uniforms showing you how to
buckle your seatbelt.
there are no advertisements,
or camera-phones, or spying eyes
or ice-cream cones; only some
healthy letter strokes that I hope
could one day come back like Underwoods,
backwood frontiers,
and gramophones.

this ride is only dangerous,
if danger is your will;
it certainly is mine.

but, the hard part is over,
you're here,
and you have only
yourself to blame.
welcome.