They bury their
heads
in sand so deep
(how nice!)
it is no wonder
that when they speak
it's sand they spit
into your eyes.

New, original
pains
keep creeping in
like unexpected guests
that insist
on overstaying
their welcome.

They become
permanent tenants
at a temporary
hotel:
having nowhere else
to go, no doors to let hem
out, there's nothing
you can do
but scream
at them
when you notice
their heavy feet
dragging across
your floor.

But most times,
you don't. They'r nothing but
background noise, like falling, accelerated,
into a whole
of yourself:
if the change is slow
enough,
there isn't enough
gravity
to be felt.

Life is but a
compendium
of this,
of these
small changes of
momentum:
lighting a cigarette,
or watching the rolling paper float down
to the floor,
wind from your
action
blowing it away
in trying
to catch it.

Reclined on the bed watching
solitude and smoke wafting
into apparent nothingness reflected
by the bathroom
mirror:
it is still there,
somewhere,
surely,
entropy.

In this
one thinks
one understands
something,
at least something,
about the nature
of being,
but of course
one does
not:
it is all just
smoke
and mirrors.

Who are we,
any singular one amongst
we,
to talk about
we?

Some try and
do it,
for better
and worse,
to the utmost
burning
silence
of the sun,
taking the pitiful
solace
of being talked about by some
of the we,
but that is
all.

There's only the I
to talk:
after this,
he's go nothing left
to say.

Almost the light of a dawn
after the Sunday,
I try to fill the time
with words
that have no
volume.

The easiest of tasks,
the hardest of tasks:
there's so much that can be said,
there's just so much that can be said.

The walls turn to grey
an there's this oily thickness in the air,
drifting in search
of a window,
of opportunity.

The words are still
massless
and I still have time
left:
for now
this will have
to do.

Again in my face,
on face:
"That *******, cancer, **** him!
Like if you agree!"

I'd sooner agree to stop this ****,
this childish personification
of disease:
for that, we have
already
all the priests,
the telemarketers,
the insidious well intentioned,
the shiny cogs rusting from the inside,
the good samaritans smiling
with white teeth
and green wallets
surrounded by black
children they saver
from malaria
("Keep your donations coming
and share this post,
we can really make a difference!)
and,
not least,
the ones who insist
on kicking
at your door at 11 a.m.
any day
of the week.

No,
cancer is not
an *******:
it just happens
to happen
to them
and to others

as well.

A child is dying,
neuroblastoma,
on the other side
of the world,
right now, right now, right now!
and I know of this
because I read of this
and maybe I'm dying
of cancer
as well,
but this
I do not
know.

I look at the clock
and think about
some woman,
someone,
still,
above the information
undercurrent.

And if I don't know
what this makes of me,
much less
of her.