Swift

The canned pop
Music thumps its tin
Synth beats and bleats
Processed vocals
From the ceiling
Of the empty cafe
While the traffic staggers
By in the bald sun.
I have found
The spiritual center

Of the universe.
BBQ chicken pizza
From a microwave
Arrives with a napkin.
There's nothing bland
About this blandness
Nothing sad about this
Suburb in the cliffs
Of a continent housing
A sort of empire, nothing

Any ancestor of the elderly
Couple who just pushed in
From the parking lot
Would even recognize
As possible, as part
Of the real. The swift
Blobs of glass and gears,
The clanking recordings
Dropping from above,
The bare contrails
Out competing the clouds,
The lights, the weird
Food, the strange

Clothing on our lumpy bodies
As we ease into plastic
Booths and sigh. We are
Magic; we are caught
Up in an enchantment
Unimaginable to the wizard,
A world of fairy in which we
Move like zombies, feel
Like clods. I am glad

To have lived through this,
Moved through this veil
Our ancestors conspired
To breathe into a life
They could not live
That lives past all
Of us. I bend
My bound head to the food,
Domesticated beast
Eating domesticated beasts
Under the tutelage
Of swift, disembodied
Spirits mysterious to me.