Poem: 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
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
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;
& 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.
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