From The Literary Review
THE VIDEO ARCADE BUDDHA
looks like any other Buddha,
could have been transported whole
from a shrine in Nepal or Burma;
chest sagging above a pot belly,
his wooden, painted limbs
pretzeled into lotus position;
the glass eyes watch absently
as the surfers and deathpunks pass
in a scratched, fingerprinted, plexiglass haze.
The boy with the dangling crucifix
and the WHITESNAKE teeshirt,
eyes still glazed from the early show
at the Starlight of They Live!,
wheels off from a flock
of Heavy Metal bighairs
and postures before the machine,
trying to figure. There are no
instructions, only a quarter slot.
He's put off, but he puts it in,
if only to watch what happens.
A bell rings and with a jerk
the hidden clockwork starts to turn;
the right hand lifts from the knee
and gestures mechanically,
the eyes blaze yellow
and the wooden mouth hinges
mutely open and shut.
A fortune in a plastic bubble
drops into the shelf below
like a slot machine in Reno,
and the wheels that spin the Buddha
into animation suddenly stop.
Who knows what fortune he's bought,
perhaps it says "Live long and prosper"
or "Never give a sucker an even break,"
but the bighair walks off looking
disgusted and, until his next
cheap incarnation, the Buddha
settles into that nothingness
you see in panhandlers between handouts,
his heart connected to the same wire
as the metal bell,
and his eyes empty, empty.
