AIRPORT ODE

Blind correspondents meet to grill
Inane candidates about their beliefs
Sun through the high airport windows
Planes the poly fibre carpet and a man
With an alarming scoliosis stares
At the arrival and departure screen
His wheeled suitcase parked behind him
The bare brown arms of a fidgeting woman
In faded jeans lift and fall the crinkling
Of a plastic bag of our essential stuff
Asteroidal chemicals, space metal genius
Titanium knees unsettle the machine
A full body scan, feet up in the stirrups
Raise your hands above your head
And hold the pose for 3 seconds unless
The authorities call for a pat down
As they did with big woman in skintight
White with no discernible panty line
And a bold camel toe for the glove to explore
I wonder what a dental dam feels like
And who would invent such a thing
They are at gate 77 going to Honolulu
They haven’t a clue about Trump I guess
Or they would stay with free why fie
Or Why Fly? Because I would be normal,
The formal heart declares, and the corner
Of the eye notes bare legs striding and hats
Hiding the unauthored thoughts of fear
The unsorted and out of sorted and aborted
Mewlings and the hat trick and clap trap
Silver slippers, grey sandals, worn Roebucks
Albino deer came up with the hard hat
Boarding the worlds most frightening light
The manful and ancient Hasid on his way
The grim tanned Chinese man and the flat
Top guzzle throated man with a grip
High black boots jeans and sunglasses
Of Malibu bunions parked on her bounteous
Black curls and a man bun double chin
Wattle shack ass shaker shapes and sculpts
The burning birthmarks carved in his face
A general calm prevails among hamsters
The wheels on the trunks go round and round
Pot bellies and red faces and precarious
Coffee cups warming their hands
It’s hard to believe we all fuck and shit
Everyone dreams comes out of mothers
Food may be fleeting and time a darling
And the clear clouds conceal as a wind
The thoughts that frill and flip beneath
Grim smiles and determined hoofing
But it is assumed that suspended
In the upended mind are boggling
Toggling desires and dense fretworks
Of memory, symphonies played by baroque
Orchestras on electric instruments
Picking out the first and last from the many
Or making many fewer with the end
And the beginning markers my friend
It is almost time for lunch and I have a hunch
It will be expensive, wrapped in plastic,
And inadequate but rich with microbes
Best confined to the lower bowel of browsing
Ungulates and ignorant birds in boxes
The great unwashed arriving on shores
Of stainless steel counters and hairnetted
Workers load bread with meat and cheese
And squirt Sriracha mayonnaise squiggles
Down the middle the cheddar cheese smile
Of turkey sandwiches there will be constipation
I’m bound to believe if the explosive opposite
Doesn’t occur there was a time when I shit
In airplane toilets as a child no flight was complete
The air sucking noise of the blue swirl into the belly
Of the hold below and I always ate every scrap
Of Salisbury steak, carrots, peas and mashed potatoes
And as a young teen I frequently joined the solo
Mile High Club masturbating with compulsive
Vigor to the sound of the stewardesses banging
Metal coffee pots and ice on the cart jerking
Into the aisle their harassed faces tanned
Smiles strained as the cigarette smoke filled
The light in the windows complimentary drinks
Jostle with the little liquor bottles emptied
By the men in suits over ice a quick martini
And a nap, jokes about air sickness bags,
I’m looking for some good cleavage
But I come up dry as only old ladies
Have the décolletage of the 1950s a rack
To pose against the cloud wracks swagging
Yes a good balcony of browned boobs
Would be tough to beat where are the gamy girls
When you need them perfuming the air
With their night sweat and toothpaste and hair gel
Avoid delays big black glasses broad brimmed hats
Crackers and papers clutched racing to the gate