The 404

The 404

A smartphone’s crying brightly in a diner by the tracks,

Someone left their backpack there, someone can’t get back.

A preacher in the doorway sells a secondhand neck brace

While an alien in his notebooks squiggles maps of outer space

And the wind, the damned drunk wind, it just keeps laughing at the crowd,

Knocking down the internet, toying with the proud,

Slurring all its words, chiding—You’d better improvise,

‘Cause the truth is devil music for the fools and for the wise.

The mayor swaggered by with a bribe he never knew

Was a bribe or what’s a bribe the idea sounded new

To him, so he sucked an orange for good luck and blessed a plastic dove,

Then tripped and fell face-first into whatever he’s made of.

We kept going past the courthouse and the flags were half-asleep,

A giddy judge crouched low in a game of hide-and-seek,

The soldier on the corner stuffing pink powder down his gun

Still thinking about how Razor’s a real good name for a son

And the bells, the holy bells, they were ringing out of tune

Like a choir of feral children growling at the feral moon,

Slurring all their words, warning—You’d better improvise

‘Cause the truth is devil music for the fools and for the wise.

As the lovers in their windows swore the moonlight was all theirs,

Slow, the morning crept in with its million miles of stares.

Their breath fogged up the future till it vanished in their glares

And the day—half-dream, half-data—disappeared for countless years.

That’s why I keep my shoes tied and my mind slogged black with rain,

Reach for inspiration like for a fast-closing subway train

As the prophets of the dive bars keep whispering my name,

Though the tones they use when singing it are never quite the same.

And the road, that blacked-out road, wants to go where this poem goes,

But turns to do its own thing like a backwards record slows,

Slurring all the words I never learned to improvise

Because the truth is devil music for the fools and for the wise.