it’s been wagered that care will soften this
crazing road. I met upon it, instead,
a disgruntled, bloated reptile. I fled
often since then, your messages on read,
pursuing volumes: fingerprints, scars. now
with deluges of dead mirroring – and
our mistaking for mind your sapless land
of empty breath – what pacific demand,
this anchoring flesh! vignette: I observe
by an hourly coffee teenagers flee,
reenter a photobooth, a spasming
mass of lungs. I consider that to be
alive may be to ever cast above
my reach: life itself, the fury thereof.
