The red phones for orders at each booth,
The red lights telling you it was time
To fetch your order for yourself, the register
At the end of the grill. The thing was meant
Literally for a single person to run the show,
And one did, taking orders while cooking,
Stepping sideways to ring up a customer.
Little place starred with old publicity stills
Of Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, Frank
Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe. Nostalgia in a town
Named for a figure in the Book of Mormon
Under a massive pyramid of a mountain
Named for a place in the same book.
The layers and layers of human naming,
Human signifying, human gambling on what
Other humans will pay, a thick honey baklava
Of creativity compiled from the simple need
To eat, survive, and breed. Nothing simple
About it. For the thousandth time and more,
I caught myself, a deadbeat near the end
Of greed, contemplating what it was taught
The ancestors to try to really speak. What
Cost dropped to trigger the benefit, what
Benefit rose above the cost to cause this
Thing of ours, alone among the beasts,
To get so carried away by communication
As a means to cumulative invention? What
Tipped the balance in favor of this strategy,
Removed the blocks from under the wheels
Of what became our runaway train? We eat,
As I ate, according to the opportunities
Our own species metes, not merely
According to the availability of any given
External niche. The one man band nodded
At the vintage jukebox as he flipped meats,
And someone shoved in quarters, delighted
At how quaint the setting and the machine,
And out poured the recorded and long-gone
Deceased voice of John Lennon, screeching
Hoarsely at the end of a midnight session
More than half a century ago on an island
The other side of the world from here,
“Shake it up, baby, now! Twist and shout!
C’mon, c’mon baby now! Come on and work
It on out!” I knew right then, as the pink sun
Set over the desert, I would never work it out.
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