Gatsby's Green Light

Green Light beats a

Progressive tense

A mirage

Drive work; drive home

Tracing sand circles

While ribcages of concrete and two by

Fours lull us to complacency

True love has no place

Amongst rep and family lines

Money’s got no grace

Love knows no time

Some things even money can't buy

A compensatory million,

Spent on the illusions shared gazes might give.

Red light

Poolside

Mirrors and halls

We drive home points and take them back

We the cynics, pointing fingers

Knucklebones tapping:  blockbusters, spirits, ads,

True life has no place

Amongst social networking and saving face

Our age knows no grace

Pretends no time

Some things even time can't buy

70 some point something years compensating,

Spent on the illusions that spinning reels give,

Chasing tails.

Yellow time

Roads pass fly

Airports and metro stops

Give our homes our good-byes

We are impermanent disguise

Our bodies fear, ache, and burn

And our bones just won't set right

It's coffin time, tapping out a morseful sigh

Death has no place amongst the lives we lie.

Forgotten funerals, no one arrives

Grace forgotten lungs’ breath just sighs

There are some things no man can right.

Compensating for the emptiness

Where our illusions lie.

Hold me;

I'm a lost generation.

A red light

Closing time

Even man has learned to fly

Atomic bombs, another riot,

Another demon in the sky

We are cycle, chaos,

Caught in the machine

Mother progress

Starts to eat,

With her rows of gears like teeth

There's a chip in my head

A ticking in my chest

Father time has us on the clock

Blue and red wires cross

My heart, and hope to die

Far from big brother's snapping eyes

Jpegging us into our eternal life

Sister Mary's on the phone

The lines are always busy waiting

Veins tranferring digabytes, fingers tasking through the night

A trinity of novelty, youth, et la mode

There's a light just across the bay

A past and progress we cannot live

In the mirage of day

Reality seems plain.

And in the dark,

Our vanity seems right.

There's a light across the bay

Starboard green

Keeping time

There's a sailcloud in the breeze

Rolling far away tonight

Atlantis waits if you can pay

The diamond stars begin to grey

We cast our lots, Russian roulette

Bullet bites us in the end

Can only play so long

Before the crash

All the bloodwork is never done

A waiting room, an emergency

Another party, more confetti

Pile it on, pass the stakes

The stock market will surely save

And you were liquor in my lungs

The taste of gold, collisions

My heart undone

If I am lost

I'm lost for good.

Ain't it something?

Everything to nothing

The tick tack toe the keyboard plays

Against my fingers finds a way

To write the words that I can't hold.

Words I'll never really know.

And which came first,

Cowardice or West Egg?

What's a king to a god?

What's a mob to a king?

And all the nothing on the screen

Life a candy-filled sweet nothings feast.

What's it to be?
What's it to me?

It’s the sense of touch

Sailing pacifics,

Seeking that flash

As the sun dies

Green light

I am a gasp,

Between the impulse and the action

Between Atlantis and Manhattan

All the things that once meant so much

Ashes, traffic smog, and dust.

There is nothing new, nor fashionable,

Just a green light mumbling

Get ready to go.

Just the dying sunlight of

A pulse.