NOT JAMES DEAN

NOT JAMES DEAN

NOT JAMES DEAN

Here’s a tattered old poster on a crumbling wall
Advertising diversions of spectacular dullness; imagine
The tedium of wet afternoons, a bored teenager,
Not James Dean, hanging around the outskirts
Of a dead-end town, not even able to picture
Other afternoons. The grass is a shabby sort of green
And the skeletons of rusting machines
Have poisoned the ground. The once gaudy
Horses that circle the carousel have broken down,
Their names half-heartedly peeled: Trigger and Champion,
Silver and Blaze, hardly poetry is it? They huddle
Miserably in a cold rain, waiting out the decades
For the children who will never come; sometimes,
A car door slams, and pinch-faced boys
With remote eyes scrabble over the fence,
Blowing smoke and oblivious to the weather.