the night cannot hold,
it never can

tracing the cracks
we have held on tight

the sun is a truck
squeezing down an alley,

the world the road and
i the gas

five million
excuses drilling

one thing that
has not changed

is that I am in no rush

the exhausted breeze
tumbles end over end,
breaking over treetops
and cascading down
from the taller buildings
on greene street.

the wavy edge of a world cut in two
appears, from the ground,
as a choking, as
a call for silence

half a day of sun
after rain is all it takes
and whatever had been
climbing up the walls
is climbing up
the walls yet again

the last common ancestor
between you and grass
is that thing that
learned to rise in the hot sunlight,
and swell in its absence,
and deliver what it learned

from somewhere in the halo
that lies between the light
and the source
emerges the voice
that cries to you, yes, maybe,
or ask again

why broadcast ill premonitions
in times of wind and storm?

what’s to read in the sky but
slate and rain, and more of the same?

i calmly walk the streets,
curb to curb

the path behind me
a cluster of lines
stretched tight

a tension in search of release
a soaked rag in search of a wring