"Leave out certain words
when speaking to them,
so that they understand better."
How can they learn
anything that way?
"But maybe they are happy
on the Southeast side."
They are among their kind.
No, that’s bigotry, that’s crap.
People are people.
There you go again.
You have no empathy,
no tolerance.
"They do serve a purpose,
they work the jobs
that are nessecary,
the one’s we don’t want."
Funny then, that we’re
working together.
When we pass on the way
to the bathroom, I struggle
for friendly words.
All I can come up with
is Hola.

Words don’t soothe like they used to.
leaf
dust
layer
breeze
shelf
day
I tried all of these,
they didn’t fit here ______.
So I died the Fantastical Death,
suffered tremendous losses.
Everyone I knew has moved on.
Even the organ is out of tune.
The homes have all imploded.
I am left with little oxygen
and an itch for jazz.
What if propellant wasn’t required
?
Gas, bread, dough.
I moved soundlessly through the night,
I swallowed wind, my gills opened up.
No one around was alive
so I took my socks off,
tested the black waters.

I walked around the earth
heel to tow,
toe to heel,
scanning the edges for
(digging for)evolved body:
men without nipples
feet without toes
eyes of architects
philosopher fingers
(the bones that outlast
plastic, beneath
gracefully doctored flesh).
But I was pre-
mature;
didn’t account for the Gout
maiming the heel.
The rich foods I craved,
my hide
saved by which.

If the Gordian knot were sliced
by Manjushri’s sword,
the waters would no longer stir,
the wind would pass through boughs
with out a sound to those
walking below.
If the wind should cause
and apple to fall,
and strike the hikers skull,
would he flare up in vain?
Or laugh at the human condition
and fly into the sun?

I love the old bus,
with it’s egg-topped roof,
and big, puffy seats.
My Grandma would have sat here,
en route to middle school,
fresh off the boat from Vicenza.
Sitting here now,
I feel like Cahill,
traversing a Peruvian dirt road,
accompanied by Sherpas
and families with caged chickens,
heading to town
to have them slaughtered and sold.

The main thoroughfare
is loaded with the confused:
those who have,
those who want.
Some faces are of stone,
looking down from pedestals,
only seeking
to satisfy their palettes
with frivolous trinkets.
Others are red, blown-out,
swollen from the runoff
that collects in their beds.
Both polar ends of humanity’s spectrum
congregate here,
pleading with their eyes.
They throw themselves to the dogs,
the iridescent, fluorescent
stone and iron giants.

Anoint me with clockless skin,
the last human desire
twittering on Time Avenue.

Make the main course contentment,
even in the face of alacrity:
(if the body is a shell, so let it)

man is severed from time
(which is not at all static, mechanical)
best in gardens

where electric color
is squeezed from Flora
blue on the eyes, yellow to heart

I beg of you, “become eternal”
and the tongue
will spell it’s message in circles

never dictating “soon”
which is always “gone’
full to history’s brim

happenings are slow to near
and we’re left with (where?)
catapulted, tumultuous

only misgiving: the one that is
the distance between who and who,
is you.