Drugstore, 1970
Getting the white just right, he spends months
Thinking through the perfect lightening of blue,
Coaxing the sun out of pipes of blue aluminum,
With blue sky shining back out.
He peers through years of catalogues for that disturbed,
Elegant, sinister lettering, to spell "drugs" on rounded
Biomorphic steel in glowing red, rendered only after measuring
Neon signs against a thousand sunsets.
He has visited the Schraft's Ice Cream sign factory
And waited in countless Venetian blinded professional rooms
Too lonely, too shabby, too kept up by ghosts, and he soaked up
Too much of the stain and dust, retaining it in these yellow window
Shades and black gothic eaves.
He has waited through packs of Shiva Thin 100's
For the correct moment of sunlight,
When the atrium flashes with all its block glass shining,
In the autumn late afternoon when its force is equal to the sun's.
He looked, in that shadowed side of the building, at neon
Until it burned a hallucination that could persist;
On the sunny side, the neon barely subsists against the gleam
Of all the light Vermeer and Du Pont could infiltrate,
Like Hollywood with all its flood lamps.
The pharmacy window reflects everything, the glassy city and
Its shattered souls, alive in funhouse mirrors
Showcasing watches, scents, spirits, and the drooling consumer
So clearly all we see is the white of the sun
In the window that reflects all but itself
When that which is most real becomes illusion.
