Singing Myself To Sleep Poem by Mark Pollins

Seven hours of television a day are watched in an average American home.
The Drug-store cowboy, replaces the Western lone-ranger.
A picture of children smiling in their sleep,
Seems out of place in a shop window on Broadway.
A beggar girl showers me with compliments to make sure she’ll get my change.
The passengers of a tired evening subway, dart suspicious looks at my friend and & I,
For we are smiling, talking loudly, enjoying ourselves.

In the playground the “Stars and stripes” is still flying.
The asphalt is soft – babies won’t break their skulls,
and the cars will never stop running on the highways,
and the garbage will continue to block up the tunnels,
and the ideas will never run out of commercials,
and the stores will be open 24 hours,7 days, for ten million years.










Written in N.Y.C. early 1990

Copyright Mark Pollins 2007