tennis shoes on a telephone wire

 

tennis shoes

five pairs, five victims,

five lies for truths suspended

on Christmas-ornamented line

 

after the walk from school

ends at popsicles, televisions,

cigarettes, and bike pedals,

 

bullies forget

 

a dog barks at sunset strollers,

shoe factories in china smoke,

voices shoot through wire

 

in the night quiet settles

on alley cat tails,

breezes knock heels together

minions

umbrellas

wind busts down concrete and brick canyons.

rain chases bums into doorways and under steps.

over hunched shoulders and upturned collars,

umbrellas open and close like fists

sales meeting

 

necktie

bubble-eyed buddha rests

on the bottom of a pop bottle,

he smiles at a crowd

that applauds the arrival of enlightenment

 

sometime this afternoon, you can count on a flash

to break the room, make our innards spill to the floor

and there, soaked up in carpet fiber,

they form miasmas that lift buddha

into heaven from that bottle of pop

 

and show us the light shining

in our faces

where it’s always been

cloudburst

storm-clouds

wind shoots dark swirls of leaves

into the gray and rain,

over traffic and down into the yard,

over the fire pit and into the garden

 

we’ll sleep there,

crow stamped and dog sniffed,

snow blossomed and frost caked

 

we’ll tease fleshy snake roots

and cold slothful bugs

with toothy smiles and bony wits

 

in dew spring morning, we humans—

sunray warm, covered with fungus,

ripe humus, fertile breathing—

 

rise