Let's see
if the burning
outlasts the candle.
By an invisible rope
I am hanged
from the clouds.
Egg, tadpole, frog—
then what the frog becomes.
We lean back, we ones
Too cool and aloof to actually cringe,
And hug the shadows we need to have fall
Across our frightened faces.
Beyond our world of coffee and singed
Bent matches and the grey-
Blue smoke of our Gitanes
There is no security.
While the roof leaked oil through slim, glittering cracks
their edges black with petroleum and rainwater,
I slept like a drunk in my stalled blue Honda.
The buses pass over me like men in the aisles of bars,
each cigarette burned to the filter.
It might be possible to live in its valley,
Even so, time makes sure the desert
Will eventually overcome us all
Mounding up dunes of sand over sand,
Over mosque and home and temple too.
And then, once gone, a small flower.