Laura Winton


Skyscraper Titans

 
 
 
 
 

Skyscrapers hover over the city in a huddle, Titans, parents of the gods, watching over us benevolent and unprotecting. On Tuesday there is an earthquake on the other side of the world. Tens of thousands dead. On Thursday a child on the bus relates "I dreamt our house fell down last night." People trapped under buildings that dropped like an elevator whose cables were cut by giants. I wonder who is more naive. The child's mother reassures him their house will not fall down. Screaming girls run into the street. Bitch. They slap and kick at each other. "Who got her ass whooped? Not me." Bitch. Men egg them on like bikinied women in a mud pen. Live Entertainment.  Why do you want to act like those people on the talk shows? My voice does not carry and I step further from the street.  One lone man notices me scribbling over the screaming and fighting to ask me what I’m writing, maybe thinks its a story or a police blotter report but it’s only poetry.  Do I write every day?  I lie so he’ll know I’m a writer, that I take myself seriously, that I don’t want to live my life on a talk show. I wince whenever I cross the street. Some people run out confidently, placing faith in the green lights and white rectangles of protection.   There is more to trust in the freak accident. The ferris wheel car dangling above the midway, the accident, the careless moment, cigarette dropped into the lap, car phone ringing, Micheline on Nike time--I in the crosswalk, angry girls in the middle of the asphalt boxing ring, unafraid of what a two-ton automobile can do to their bodies, but what the other girl can do her psyche. They should just arrest them. Aren't there curfews? Stupid woman on the bus riding home to the suburbs.  It’s ok to work in the city.  But she hates to be here after dark.  When “they” come out. It’s ok to take whatever job you can get patching up people who fight in the middle of the street, to work with the girls’ mothers.  Then go home and pay your property taxes to a school not for those girls, property taxes to lock those “bad” girls up far from your children.  Stupid woman.  What will you ever do that will advance society? Who is more naive? What you can't control should be locked up. Prisons are zoos where we watch one another's wild uncontrolled behavior.  Watch the tiger pace its cage. The electric chair replaces the hunt.  Tag and tranquilize the beast.  Why do you want to be wild? Others will only lock you up, observe you, throw scraps at you and point.  Women will bring their children in from the suburbs to look at you, to study your animal behavior and watch you mate.   My male friends run up behind me on the street unafraid, pull at my hair, grab my arm, alarmed when I wheel around with clenched fists ready for a fight, tensed, dodging cars and attackers, angry because they can afford to be naive.  I want to be wild, attack, teach them fear the rules of the jungle I live a tame life surrounded by poachers waiting for Titans waiting for the Titans to fall from their cables, benevolent and crushing running to the windows in the thunder listening for the falling of houses.

  (c)Laura Winton 2004