End Another Day

Bangladesh - China – Canada – Joe Fresh T&T Can’t Buy Me Love

jpmelville

my god my job in the global economy

hmmm

let me tell you

i am a simple man

in a corporate cross-global space

living in hotels

eating in restaurants

walking on streets

swamped in urbanity

a soul among millions

Dakka - Beijing - Vancouver

swimming in a swamp of madness

cars and neon signs

airports

and mergers...

this is no marco polo world

no wilderness

no daemons

no wonder

no treasure

no awe

no sirens

not even conquering

for all is conquered

all has conformed

we export and we import now

we own

we buy

we come laden with oil, wet

we come laden with sport shoes and cell phones and garlic, sweat and grime

we unisex partners, ooooh

come go laden with the same

and call ourselves richer, fairer, peaceable even tolerant for the effort?

but i

with little to do but open my eyes

i can see

the movers and shakers, banga bazaar

the hawkers on the street sides, wangfujing

the gals in the clothing shops, rideau centre

like myself, existing

paying a bill

watching the world move past them, they

like myself

making a penny

maybe two!

your pennies

my pennies

our role on stage is the same,

i earn a buck or two for two years commitment to a god job

good god save the world job

you earn a penny or two for each day making sales

god the dollar and all else pales

who knows what next

maybe me no contract

maybe you no thing to sell

we will all have to hunt

for something new to do

our bodies brains on market shelves

oddly godly jobs

in a monolithic certainty

of ocean going freight ships ploughing the waters of the seven seas

of flares burning through the dark of night above natural gas wells

of women buried beneath rubble a thousand mourned

of men buried beneath their tons of coal

of zero one zero one zero one

one digital voice

one prophet of truth

commerce

consumption

petroleum

just buy, sell, and ye shall be blest

so we are all the same

sharing this same god

a nice place to be

togetherness

this monolithic certainty of conformity

no doubts about you being some… other

no, no stranger no more

just me

just you

maybe for the first time

i can see the servers in the restaurants in this foreign land

servers as people

as persons

as close as possible

we are friends

briefly

i must eat

they must make a few dollars

together only for a brief moment

to see if the stranger enjoys the food

myself responding

a tip to him

a tip to her

in english

maybe in what we call chinese

smiling

gesturing

slurping with gusto

holding the cup of hot tea between my hands

grasping the beer glass the man that i must be

smiling

me

them

i pay, my hungers satisfied

they earn, their weekend movie paid for

sex maybe

human contact

film or skin

i smell the taxi drivers

cigarettes dangling from their lips

the smell of beggars

their children holding my arm

i smell the street

women marching arm in arm

sweat of a man tumbling home

and wow so strange

how i see in others

the meaninglessness of their cars

the emptiness behind cosmetics

all so so much oh my god the same everywhere i go

hmmm

my eyes wide

god knows my mouth and our hearts sealed

no threat to our dollars or jobs

clothes behind glass

eyes caged behind frames

hearts boxed behind a disney bill of goods

oh, all these people i am supposed to love

they whiz past

gone somewhere

destinations

far, far away from here

far from this pavement beneath my feet

and wow so strange

i see on the street

men, neatly trimmed hair, legs hurried

long black trench coats fluttering as they dash

their hands busied with digital devices

other men walking briskly together

climbing into air conditioned cars while rickshaws stream on by

stern, self important

their hands busied with briefcases

far from this pavement beneath my feet...

this pavement beneath my feet...

i stand still on a street corner

grey, polluted sky above

gusting wind tousling my hair

my sanity found in knowing somebody near

even in the smallest way, yes

here i am in Dakka, a concentrated place, yes

here i am in Beijing, bustling millions, yes

but

here i am with people

some, like the restaurant servers, here together

some, like the men and their briefcases, worlds apart...

but people all the same

and my heart reaches out...

i think we kid ourselves when we say our career keeps us going...

if you take away people, even for half a day

if you take away familiarity for several days

we begin to fall apart...

so it is people

contact

association

warmth

this is human life

 

we live a kind of mirage

believing that our manifestations are our substance...

the sewer cover with a fish pattern, our washed glass windows,

our machine made gloves...

that this is all our creation

the madness of urbanity

utter destitution in its meaningless

the mirage of false gods…

except…

i think...

these false gods of my modern world

are nothing

for the Venicians loved their Venice

the Mayans their temples

the Algonquin their long houses

and the Greeks their Sirens

these false gods of my modern world

are nothing

for i have you

i have the rickshaw man working for his children

i have the lipsticked woman selling dumplings and her smile to her friends

i have

how meaningless i am...

…provided love