A New Jersey Trilogy


                     A NIGHT IN NEW JERSEY
                                
               Another train, another minute
               another night with me stuck in it.
               Another streetlight going on
               another long time come 'fore dawn.
               
               Seven men in seven mansions
               seven crooks who climb the stantions.
               Seven dogs to bark a warning
               seen hours come 'fore morning.
               
               A toilet far-off distant flushes
               a young love dreams her young love crushes.
               A mother yearns for husband touches
               a broken spirit 'pon her crutches.


                      A DAY IN NEW JERSEY
                                
               I light another cigarette,
               this one to savor.
               I know that to an outsider
               I must look a million miles away
               as I search the universe,
               scanning infinite space with my mind's eye
               for the words, the thoughts.
               The body dissolves,
               the room fades,
               slips I into a formless,wordless.


                   ANOTHER DAY IN NEW JERSEY

               It becomes so hard to transcend
               the drudgery
               and the picayune bitchery
               of life...
               
               With the sounds of people talking,
               in a room that's not my own.
               The t.v. set is raging
               the same soap operas of my home
               (or the house my mother lives in;
               it's not the same home so forgiving).
               I am too old to live there
               yet too young to make home elsewhere.
               Like the self-full little skunk
               I have been hit crossing the road.




copyright Michael R. Martin, 1996
all rights reserved