Static

You stand staring.
All around you is noise,
clamoring for your dollars,
for your time and attention,

for your soul,
like street hawkers in old London,
reaching for you, their raucous voices

piling one on another,

a wall of sound, distracting
yet unfocused, pulling you
like a hand from the grave
in a bad horror movie,

clawlike, not a surprise,
but making you jump none the less,
a madcap madness, devilish in it’s excess,
unaware that in the end,

it’s all static, the messages lost
in the noise, the only images that remain
are not theirs, but yours, the ones
you carry deepest in your heart.

About this poem

I am in Las Vegas seeking work again today. If you have ever been here, you know that Vegas is the land of noise and flash and glitz. Everywhere lights, moving images, music, all vying for your attention.

But a curious thing happens when you are here more than a day or so. It all starts to blend together, to become static. Yesterday, as I came off the tram from the Las Vegas Convention Center, riding the escalator  I saw this video wall, all gone to static. “There’s a poem in there somewhere.” I said to myself as I took the picture.

And there was.

Tom