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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

pollution sunsets

tired from ten hours of work
i lie down on the couch
(i tell the truth in the morning
and i lie at night) and think
about the remaining fourteen hours
before work starts up again
and lasts the longest ten
and i think about how i sleep
through seven of the hours
and how four of them i’ll drink
to the final sip of a twenty four
that isn’t measured by hands
of a clock ticking tick ticking
where are these seconds going?
i ask my face and i don’t care
because i don’t want seconds
no not tonight not when i can’t
even handle myself or the first thing
handed to me and you walk in the door
but i don’t want to see you at all
not when you’ve been with someone
who isn’t me all day
who isn’t watching clocks—
watching clocks stop and watching time
wind itself backwards into the place
where you and i were us
and we were okay and things were
okay
not great—no no no
but, at first, i could smile without
lifting the weights off the side of my mouth
and throwing them over my shoulder
and forcing the fakest expression—
a smile a mother would take for a suicide
or, at least, a cry and a call
to the other stray dogs howling
in the deepest alleys in the city
(and not even i’m listening)
but i’m waiting for the sun to tire
and rustle itself among the smoky treeline
resting its hot burning head on the green
turning blue and white clouds to red
purple glorious color spread in a burst
across the evening sky——-and i know
pollution causes the most beautiful sunsets
and i know i’ll still be here tomorrow
and i know things might be worse
but the sunsets are only getting started
and we add every day to their beauty
to our carelessness to this false family’s sun
coming screaming spinning as fast as it can
building up speed and hope—to break through
the horizon in all its scarred and scattered light