Original Post Date
2014-11-06 11:00 AM
Original Body
Years before a foot
of track was laid for
the Bart system
my father collected
record albums with
miles of tracks pressed
into the grooves
he had hundreds of them
and he always handled
them by the edges
he didn't want to
get fingerprints, scratches
or dust on them
said it would
ruin the sound
(not to mention waste his hard earned money from his trusted Janitorial
job over on Van Ness Ave)
But as much as
he tried to take care of those
albums, he couldn't keep some
of them from warping and getting
scratched
and those albums would
spin like a wheel going
east, west, north, ,south
or whatever direction our
minds took us
Miles, Monk, Lou Donaldson,
Sonny Rollins, Willie Bobo
My dad had 'em all
and many others
and over time my
father lost album after album
like leaves falling from a tree,
like a friend dying
and in the Bart station
in the morning those lost
albums and songs are found
among yesterday's newspapers,
wet cardboard and the footsteps
of those with places to go
a man with skin the color of
yesterday's coffee sits with his
horn in a florescent flood of light
his breath a husk
of a note
the fog lifts and
a new song is given birth,
warped, scratched
and we pass by
heading towards
the escalators, the
stairs
in a direction
of our own
(c) 2014 Tony Robles