lunchtime thoughts of a gallery attendant at the end of the world


1.
I’d like to go out for lunch in Manhattan 
and get a liver sausage sandwich.

2.
The roof of the gallery rattles when extreme wind blows.

3.
I’m avoiding today the demand to do things quickly, 
to get to the end.

4.
To live inside your mind you must be tough, 
like Kerouac.

5.
The chocolate liquorice log didn’t help; will have to follow it 
with a deep fried lasagne topper.

6.
We don’t like being alone, 
even when we ask for it.

7.
Who made the decision to build another pyramid 
when the harvest is failing?

8.
You can’t smell something that’s dead 
until it’s dead.

9.
I just want to move, after six generations in this tribe that’s grown too big 
and a drought coming on.

10.
Someone has graffitied on the wall: “Tania was here, tee hee.” 
I’m not offended. The centuries have made me very tired.

11.
Lunchtime at the basilica, a lot of people worried about higher taxes, 
slave revolts, and the devalued currency.

12.
I’ve lost faith in the new empire of Byzantium.

13.
I wish I didn’t have to sit here amongst the gunpowder.

14.
You don’t see EXIT signs, until you have to EXIT and can’t get back 
to where you entered.

15.
She said it was a picture of a rainbow stretched to black.

16.
Blue sky floods into the gallery 
through high windows

I can’t keep my head level, 
I have to look up.