Late at night all was silent in the neighborhood
only the steady breathing
beside the neighbors
in their sleeping beds
and they noticed the sounds again
“Oh Jim, these last few months have been the happiest of my life!”
“Yada yada, warden: Come in an’ get me! Hah hah hah hahahahah!”
James Cagney?
Edward G Robertson?
What?
Why?
the neighbors sit bolt upright as from
a nightmare
not to sleep again
until the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
cuts loose
with the national anthem
by the dawn’s early
light.
And they woke up late
bleary-eyed
and wondering
wondering at the music
which fairly crept into their Wheaties
Sunday morning
Church music
Gospel music
Sunday morning television sermon music
and the slow mournful moan of a pipe organ
from the house next door
just like Aunt Agnes’ funeral dirge.
But Aunt Agnes was dead and gone
dead and gone…
strange goings on
behind the door
of that broken down house across the street
from dusk till dawn
for three days
And for awhile nobody really noticed
much
what with the summer days so long
and spent away from home
most of the time
and even the kids mostly too preoccupied
with the ice-cream truck melodies
too preoccupied
to snoop around
the neighborhood
unearthing amazing facts
and fantasies…
All through the day and into the nights
spent before their own tv’s
nobody really noticed
the strange goings on of
Walter Cronkite
with the network news
or Edward G. Robinson and
most everyone was far asleep by then
anyway.
But if some lone person were out on a stroll in the
stealthy tomcat hours before dawn
he would hear the sounds
sounds of awe
sounds of wonder
from a house on a corner
whose windows were lit
like the eyes of a horror movie
corpse
with an eerie blue glow that didn’t sleep at night
and if he stopped and strained his ears
for a moment beneath the black dome of eternity
he may have been frightened by the sounds he heard
“You won’t get away with this!”
“Yada yada, warden!”
“You haven’t got a chance!”
“Yadayadayadayada!”
“POWPOWPOW!”
And hurried quickly away
to his own home
his own world
where he was safe.
So it went.
Then bit by bit
people did begin to notice.
They didn’t notice ‘20,000 Years in Sing Sing’
they didn’t even notice ‘The Alfred Hitchcock Hour’
But the next day
some housewives going to the market
heard sounds of Mexican soap opera
from that old house.
behind the closed door
closed
like the lid of their papa’s
coffin
And finally some anxious neighbor
went on over there
to the house on the corner
and pounded on the door for awhile
and when no answer came
he scurried off
scurried off and found the policemen
and told them the story
of three days
three days of
movies, talk shows, soap operas, news broadcasts, quizzes,
commercials, dog shows, races, varieties, and now this, sermons…
Gospel music and
television sermons.
and he told the cops the old man lived all
alone
and was in his nineties or something
and the cops just kinda shook their heads
and looked kinda bored
as if to say, “yeah, well we know the rest.”
and the officers came and
they crossed the untrimmed lawn
and rapped on the door
schoolboys rapping on their
daddy’s coffin lid
the tv answered
from behind the door
“Yada yada, Warden, come in an’ get me hahahahahahahahahah!”
so they just walked in.
The body was enveloped in shadow
but one hand rested on the arm of the easy chair
exposed to the glow of blue light
which seemed to possess
a life of its’ own.
From then on
it was just the usual
banal dialogue
after all
That’s Hollywood…
And outside in the sunlight
the neighbors were all
crowded around on the sidewalk talking
and whispering
even though
nobody was listening.
And in a while
an ambulance pulled up
and a morbid hush fell over
the people
as two white clad negros took a stretcher
and a white white sheet
out of the back
and just when things
were getting good
some idiot
turned off
the tv.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1970, 2009
Perfect.