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Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend! Can We Get a Spotlight on Him?

Boy, what a way to make a living: a throw of the dice

will never abolish money, real money, the kind that

communicates by clairvoyance. Real money tap dances

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in the dust of stars, water rights. Real money is magic

& the magic is in the shoes until it’s not. Hal said

it was history written by hustlers, carpetbaggers,

but Hal’s been dead seven years (bad luck). Do you remember

enough to forget? To shake your fist when you’re too old

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to shake your anything else? Hey gang, home means snowy-capped

the thousand yard stare of a ram, the slipper that you cram 

your foot into, glass be damned. When I was a kid, Channel 13 

ended broadcast days with Simon & Garfunkel singing

“The Sounds of Silence” over images of The Strip;

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& the people bowed & prayed/to the neon god they’d made

matched the shimmering mirage of mirages yet to come

& you never knew if the station thought this solemn

or hilarious. A throw of the dice abolished by

signing off; signing off abolished by money’s magic. 

In the real dark night of the soul it’s always an infomercial. 

You’ve forgotten it. You’ve forgotten all about it until

that wonderment of sullen searchers returns to teach it. 

Everyone remembers just enough for irrelevance,

colonists crushed by their own success. It’s a sucker bet.

It never tires of paying off, playing out, going bust.

From the dry depths, the glittering shipwreck, we fill our 

pockets, even though we’re naked. You think this is bad? 

My mother still thinks I’m a poet in New York.