Friday Night Lights Project: Week #3

In my neck of the woods, the sky was ominous and headlights were flashing off puddles. But Friday has its own light… and here’s how it shone in the eyes of Cindy Keong, Ashley Martin & this Lost Shark. It’s week #3 of the Friday Night Lights Project.

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Friday, January 27

fat & sassy
crows line the street
trouble rooftops
with points of dipping black

cluster in their groups
& begin the night talk:
agree or disagree
on a roost

the old birds often
silent, as if catching
for a moment
youth’s lean grace

pitch into exultant
flight, crazing through
the dark land
upward to the light

GN

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CK

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Fortune cookies are not what they could be.

There is a constant and international standard
of time and all Friday
the boy in Study Hall waited for that time
he would not have to read a book of stories specially chosen
for boys with a boy-like aversion to books
narratives and plots edging to their ends
like the speed of light
steady and already revealed
he was going to test out.

The boy in Study Hall waited
for what had to pass and for the whole
hour he was with me he brushed at
the down on his cheeks with a bookmark
repetitively like a knife not quite catching
the edge that is not there yet, only a lamb
that would give right away to the blade he
wondered if there ever was such
a soft-skinned Jesus

he covered his eyes
like Blind Man’s Bluff
the revelations kept going
until end time came to us all

and the boy with revelations went home
to stare out his window at the light
constantly diminished
constantly added into the next day.
The fortunes never say what you didn’t know already.

AM