Dan Wilcox

LEW WELCH IN ALBANY
(for Jordan Smith)


Kerouac’s roads lead across the Bridges of Hart Crane
or
do the bridges take us across the road?

When I cross the street to the Library just a block away
or
centuries from a medieval study, a kalamata Odyssey
red lights are not for sex but for traffic.

They find bodies here in the ghost buildings
breathing light, no ring of bone
just death
guns hidden in sheds, guns passed around like Library cards
or
the money from former mayors who never rode the subway.

TRAVELING AMERICA

I never go to Taco Bell
but today running errands
I got hungry & ordered
a Burrito Supreme & a Pepsi
sat at a window seat
looking at the parking lot
the bricks & windows of the
side of a building, a blue sky
the Avenue & traffic on my right.

I was in a place in America
I had never been before
a thousand miles away
or just across town.

Dan Wilcox is the host of the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center in Albany, N.Y. and is a member of the poetry performance group "3 Guys from Albany".  As a photographer, he claims to have the world's largest collection of photos of unknown poets.  His book Gloucester Notes is available from FootHills Publishing, & Inauguration Raga from A.P.D. He is an active member of Veterans For Peace. His blog is dwlcx.blogspot.com.