Watching Cement Dry

When I was 16, I worked for the Peoria Park District
and I had to get up at 5 a.m.
One winter
we put in new sidewalks.
At the end of the work-day the cement was still wet
and someone needed to stand guard
to make sure no one vandalized the sidewalks
before they solidified.
You know how people like to put their names and footprints
on everything.
I volunteered to watch the cement
every night for a week.
For 7 whole days I could sleep
late, come to the park at 5 p.m. and stay until midnight
watching cement dry, that gray pudding, that
hardening river.
I sat on a little metal pony in the children’s playground
bolted down
with a big rusty spring at the base, dead crooked eyes, chipped
blue paint. It was cold
in Illinois, late November, brisk winds,
and I sat on that metal pony
and tried to read Nietzsche
by the light of a street lamp.
God was dead and nobody could see me
and I learned that reading Nietzsche just isn’t
the same if no one can see you doing it.
Nobody came to vandalize, apparently the universe didn’t give
two shits about me
or Nietzsche or
the drying cement.
Occasionally an oak leaf
fell
and blew and got caught in the cement
like how fossils or memories form
and one time
I chased a dog off
like a blurry fear in my mind.
I wanted to understand
what was happening to me
and what to do about it, wrapped in my fat cocoon coat
and mittens, turning the pages
of Beyond Good and Evil, licking my fingers,
wool on my tongue.
Life wasn’t as clear-cut
as a flawless flat sidewalk
to a flawless flat heaven
as I sat alone straining forward
on my metal pony, mouth open to the teeth-
freezing wind.

Cab Shorts

Two cab drivers brag
about how much money they make.
Holes in their shoes.

*

Eyesight failing.
Rain on the windshield.

*

I’ve been sitting in this cab so long
my butt-crack’s disappeared.

*

The crunch of two cars
colliding in the other lane.
What was I thinking about?

*

President on the car radio.
I spill my coffee changing the channel.
Thanks Obama.

*

Two weeks on the job
the cab driver is giving advice.
Yawns all around.

*

Cabs in the night
yellow as bananas.
At dawn the drivers sing:

Daylight come
and we wanna go home.