LET PEOPLE POEMS

reflections on a summer’s day by zachary whalen

August 9, 2011 at 12:32 am | Posted in poem | Leave a comment

people move around slowly without purpose or direction

i try to move in a direction but they move in front of me

a lot of the people are old and it’s not good to look at them (they look bad)

i have to keep moving around or away from them

when i’m riding the bus it has to keep stopping to pick up a lot of old people

they board the bus slowly, sometimes the bus has to ‘kneel’

they look confused and they can’t understand how to operate the fold down seats

other people get on the bus

there are poor people on the bus with lots of kids and grocery bags

there are obese women who talk loudly to each other

there are people who stand in front of the doors instead of standing somewhere else

they don’t move and i have to squeeze between them when i get off

at the beach nobody is in the water

it smells really bad and the smell seems to suggest that the water is bad

someone says ‘it smells really bad here lets find another spot’

down the beach the smell is also bad

someone says  ’something probably died in the rocks or something’

the air is hot and it seems like the heat and the bad smell are somehow the same thing

(they are the same thing, in a way, i guess)

there are a lot of people on the beach and they look like people on a beach

they are moving around the beach or being still

they are moving and not moving in ways that i can’t understand

they are happy in places that smell like dead things