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