white floral lace-licked wallpaper
I tapped like that too, when I was a child
Imagined that the sound of my nails clacking
was a horse galloping,
going at a breakneck pace down the asphalt street
I dream of polyethylene
housing shells of aluminum and cement
empty as snake skins, full as catacombs
we spend nearly 93% of our lives
indoors, in cars, inside
behind one screen or another or another
in my dream I am lifting up storm drain covers
and collecting minutiae with handmedown hands,
I must’ve been born a bottom feeder
scraping glass and earwigs and receipts
torn mail, worms, candy wrappers
40 years isn’t so long
I may see it sometime soon
What will my mind be full of when my
feet pass that precipice, will my mother
still be there?
Or will she layout the amber of my psyche
while I’m asleep? Tap tapping like a child
on the walls of my skull? Nothing I am is mine
nor has it ever been
I am carrying around a borrowed soul
Send me back to 1976 so I can
watch her hitchhike from behind that rickety house
so I can follow behind from window to car to bar
to long stretch of darker roads and back home again,
deflated, emboldened, innocent
I’d savor every twilight moment
and if I fear’d not blissful nonexistence, I’d rewrite it
I’d tuck her back into bed
shield her from gazes that knew no better
who could not guess but should’ve been able
the swallowed path they shoved her along
I’ve seen the pictures, I’ve met the man
and if I fear’d not blissful nonexistence,
I’d bring them with for kindling and start it over again
though this is a battered book, I know,
shared by many to this day ad nauseam
porcelain dolls still watch over
emptying rooms, what will become of them
when these houses trade for graves
few see the horror in such worn-thin conditions
in the blankness of it all
what will become of us
when we lose what little we brought with us
and are left with a mountain of luggage, guilt,
and coins they told us we’d need
he says he is tired of life and
I understand
though I do not believe it is
Life that we are tired of
I wonder if the clock plays all instruments simultaneously
a one man-band with a nearly infinite audience
if somewhere
(overlapping this very second)
someone is placing sticky finger pads over
inked out images, staining them with sentimentality
thinking to themselves,
If only I could go back, I’d savor
every twilight moment
I’d follow behind unaware and out of time
from window to door to window to door
to roads that get darker the longer you walk
for I see a yawning pitch-black pit in the distance
waiting to swallow us still alive
waiting for us to wander in, confused,
waiting for us to fall through gracelessly
and eat all that we are;
a sequence of memories
an order of keys
