Watching, Waiting
A woman haunts
the lamppost on my street
with a cap and surgical mask
exuding a unique air of mystery—
this can’t be a covid thing.
There isn’t a bird in the sky
that could extract nails from her eyes,
and the kids marching through puddles like millipedes are stung by her medical
gaze.
One time, gazing at her molten skin
I realized
she lives at the apex of a volcano and
fiends to eat me whole.
Her shopping bags
overflow with alien crops,
her deathly frontal lobes, glimmer.
But who will watch the prisoners when she’s gone?
I guess these are the streets where it’s ok
to truly lose your mind.
Lost lenses
When my contacts
drop
into swerving
blue buildings
I fall to my knees
and wade through
a sea
of shipwrecked luggage.
I feel the menace of a steaming
exhaust pipe
by my head
and the crack of high heels
passing
without words.
I’m helpless
as dogs bark over traffic and
flowering lampposts drip with flames.
Then I recall
this morning my landlord
taped up my windows
dowsed my clothes
with kerosene
and towed my car.
So, I slip on my spectacles and
find a gloomy bar
to inspect
the day,
because there are oil fires
on the coast
nearing the city
and I can only feed off the ruins.