Motel Clerk: Dusk Poem by Lamont Palmer

So much, so little under
the barometer of lonely light;
waves have hit a silence,

before the morning grasping, and just
after the sun gets up
(reminding me of an O’Hara poem)

intractable, through the hidden fury
Of stasis: ‘oh where have you seen
me before’:

repression, sadness, Hershey bars,
trash of the meaningless world
of shame. Now I ask of you to pass

before me with your borrowed
keys, and your desolate vision
of travelers. You’ve gone like

nomads, while I am with my kid
who runs like white molecules
through lobbies, dressed in young hopes,

vending at strangeness. Out of a
machine emitting change, comes
my own simple vision: a mustard seed.