Emotions are given shape on a worried little screen,
compounding interest.
And the debt is rendered in remembered currency,
holes filled with endless tinkering,
tactile meanderings, at ten bucks a pop.

A digital agency collects shoe payments –
ALL SALES R FINAL –
In modern false laughter,
as honest as the source understands,
the sins are forgiven, the transaction processed,
and the check is caaaaashed, baby.

In lost words they communicate the facts,
leaving space to connect the dots
until the one that speaks to them in basement corners,
in black strokes staring indifferently through them,
is embrace and called Truth.

Plotted, charted according to popular theorem,
meticulously fretted over,
worked and reworked--confirmed.
Follow the order and find the balance.

But, variables.
Solve for x where x is an unknown.
The question may yet have an answer--
a suitable conclusion to prove the proof,
but has the problem a solution?

At rest, we are simple equations,
rounding ourselves to the nearest whole,
adding fractions of a percentage,
drawing a line and calling the bottom number
-------------------------
TOTAL

But, variables.
1(x), where x is an unknown.
And all the fractions we add
leave us fractured,
divided from the solution, the end sum.
remainders to be rounded off,
estimates of ourselves.

There's a room somewhere,
locked fast behind an unassuming door
looming grey-brown at the end of a
misshapen corridor.

Inside, the relics of a time lost in time
to time.

A mitt, engraved with the counterfeit signature
of a ballplayer whose name once rang a bell,
smelling of adolescent sweat,
still dusted with sandlot crumbs,
a reminder of those ground *****
that sped by too fast to field,
those fly ***** just out of reach,
suspended in a June twilight
lost to time.

Ribbons and awards and certificates,
signed by leaders of puny regimes
paved and repaved over,
proof of a world before this,
an era of (now) perceived achievement,
legitimized, glorified by Old English type
printed on recyclable stock paper.

Ticket stubs from blockbuster flops,
receipts of a linear plotline:
Drama, comedy, a budding romance -
Temporarily amusing on such a spacious screen
but ultimately unfulfilling;
the plot peters towards the end.

Lost in time the boy cries out
with no one left to answer but the man
who, as quietly as he entered it,
exits the room,
as always, leaving the door just ajar,
enough to muffle the shrieks of a little boy
chasing an invisible horizon.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised
how much cleaner the air breathes up here
compared to the stale, stank fog
back down in the little city we shared.

—A thought:
I barely recall the specific stench,
an ever-present detail in what was my
day-to-day existence.
However, your words, complaints, ideas:
"Like a diaper full of death" you said once, exactly,
play in my head like a tape recorder,
old and warped a little, but undoubtedly accurate.—

And now, am I looking down on you?
Or down at you?
Over you?

Is that you,
floating place to place,
living on a moment like a speck of dust,
never entirely within anyone's grasp?
Are you still toiling in the burning sun,
harvesting what you planted,
growing it strong and right?

What movements are these?
You live and toil
and burn your fuel
and spend it all each day
and earn it back again.

Oh, if you could join me!

No, if only I could join you.
I would toil, burn and spend everything
to find a way so you could breathe, too,
this new air.
The air...

Sweeter each moment,
but thin, unfit. My head either
aches or...
it does not feel at all.

Do you look up at me? Up to me?
Up...over me?
And what now have I got to look up to?

A gust blows the speck away,
gone elsewhere, never to stay.