We interrupt your regularly
Scheduled program to bring
You this Ellis act alert
Mom and pop are missing,
Pry open your eyes
Let your ears hear
Mom is 79 and pop
Is 82 and have lived
In San Francisco all their lives
Mom and pop–unplugged,
Displaced in a city of wireless wires
Where friends that never were are
Flung into heaps of the unfriended,
Replaced by holograms that begat
Other holograms who slither behind
Tinted glass bus windows
In kitchen pot silence
In floorboard splinters
In the skin of torn rugs
We search for stains like
Maps for clues, traces
This is an Ellis alert
And mom and pop are gone
And with them the smell of
Adobo
Gumbo
Black eyed peas
Malunggay
Bitter melon
We looked for mom and pop
In the book of landlords
And that book, whose edges
Were a knife, whose pages were
Not stained by a single memory,
Read only one name: Ellis
Ellis cover to cover
Ellis front to back
Ellis open and shut
Case closed
And we searched for
The book of the evicted
Whose pages and spines multiplied
And were strewn on street corners and
Garbage bins and the names of the
Evicted were written in the streets by
The shrill talon of the raven to be
Paved over by the machinery of
No memory
This is an Ellis alert
And mom and pop
Are out there somewhere
Pry open your eyes
Let your ears hear
With the click of the
Tongue, and not the mouse,
Pop made the birds come and bring
Together philosophies from every
Corner of the world
And
Mom is your mom,
Is my mom, is your skin,
Is my skin, is my memory
Is our memory
Pry open your eyes
Let your ears hear
Mom and pop
Are missing
We now return
To your regularly
Scheduled program
© Tony Robles 2013