by Eliseo Martinez

Switch On / Switch Off

The sun was declared inefficient.
Since then, the sky and all things in it
have been replaced with energy-saving, cost-efficient
fluorescent lighting. All light, all weather, all morning
and evening replaced with an
on/
off
switch.

No more days melting across
the windshields of parked cars.
No more songs, no more music,
no more words
inspired by the cool, blue shadow that spreads across
the mind like the wings of a great
bird
as the last light of day
diminishes into candles held
in memory, in hands passing across
the page
the guitar neck
the lover's back.

No more clouds to lend shade or rain. No more
depth to the closed eyes of stars.
No more sun.
Just light, then
darkness.
Then light again.
All days, all life in days, marching in uniform
like the rigid hands of clocks,
moving in a scientific precision like coins
through the hands of bankers.

With no home left in the sky
the sun, the moon and stars, the
clouds, all moved into offices, high-rise buildings
universities and schools
low-cost prisons
even the insides of passing cars, trains, buses
even the insides of televisions.

This is why, earlier today, the breaking morning news
coming through to me on the television was
disrupted by heavy thunderstorms.
The channel became unviewable as raindrops slammed
against the inside of the television screen. All of the reporters,
survivors, victims and lifeless bodies suddenly soaked to
the skin. I changed the channel to the first star emerging
over a two-for-one sale at the local furniture store.
I turned it off.

In every office, in every former home of false light,
the sun rises and sets, stars explode across the ceilings,
clouds hover ominously over the center of conference rooms,
war rooms, bar rooms, and hospitals.
Every inmate feels the genuine warmth of the sun unharnessed
by the electric light in the sky. Birds and animals are
beginning to find their ways indoors, into the new homes of
flowers and trees already beginning to bloom, to root,
in tires, in desks, in toilets and in operational televisions.
I went to work and this is what happened:

I unlocked the front door to the sun. I answered the phone
while a cloud rolled into the curls of my hair. I had to pick a flower
from the pencil sharpener before I was able
to use it.
Outside, as I watched from my desk, the unblinking rest-of-the-world
waited patiently in silent horror for their
permanent lunch breaks.
I stepped out of the building for my scheduled break.

What was beginning to happen in minds
everywhere was also beginning
in mine.

More Poetry Row ...

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