walk, don't run
remember when we were young?
the days were marked with our
own personal nuance in our
transparent and unbreakable plans,
and the hours by childish boredom and
evanescent impulse to break them.
we settled into each our own,
that we shared because we thought
we had each other right,
and when we were wrong
we served to one another our
indentured solitude.
the seconds were my friends and the minutes
broke their promises never to be long;
i won't belong without you and your scent.
i am afraid to be
a guest in my childhood home and a
passing tourist in my former dreams
which include you
remember how we ran?
early in the morning
we were scientists of the mind and body
and questioners and beholders
we tried the position of inquisition
of feet upon the dashboard and trash about the floor
and cigarettes and something remembered
not as potent anymore.
walk, don't run.
remember how we tripped over each other?
impregnable intensity drained us of our reason;
control became an asset of the controlled
but now i stand by the flank of the
ranks of real people,
and they teach me how to walk away.  
we ran too much, i think.

I was afraid to walk outside in case the rain would catch me standing as I am and was; alone, unrequited, an apple-pitted girl against whatever comes to mind.  Say it, anything, dance damply under the unmoving ceiling fan and move like falling wind in summer.  The only time I feel like me, summer.  The only time to stop and not feel immobile; the only time to move and not feel pushed.  The only happy time.  Have an apple, feel it to the core.  Wear a dress, and let the rain fall through it and the wind soak it so the clinging mocks your need to hold on, but still let go, and watch it tumble down your legs and mouth; cling to something far away, through dreams.  Like flimsy cloth, you and I, like warmth and wind and rain, we can be.  You and me.  Or just me alone.  Unrequited, clinging to the edge of the line where the rain starts, racing hearts, which will cross the line first? Who will win?  It's the decision of my life, whether to walk into the rain or not.  But it's the time that catches me against my watch, and so embarrassed, I let my hand catch the rain until it stops suddenly.

it rained yesterday,
and as we walk today onto
the soaking track,
the long and circular
spiked-rubber
track, ***** puddles
assault us,
bearing the floating,
struggling corpses of
worms that escaped
the drowning underworld
only to be swallowed by
the waves of the
upperworld, where we humans
run and play with each other and
with nature, but as much
as we can change in our mother,
we cannot quell her lachrymose heart,
and so we walk
gingerly among the
vain attempts
at survival which manifest
themselves as bodies laying
split and ******, pinned
to the earth by natural needles
(their fluids drying over
their skin, sticking them,
melding them,
to the ground) as
though someone has
prepared them for dissection.
but no one save i
attests to the sincerity
of ****** science;
i am the only one
to delve into their
infirm bodies
to seek their minds
and travel
down their tracts and
empty their glands
and poke at their five
or four
hearts, however many
worms have;
i am the only one
to dissect them, yet
lay one digit on them i do not.
i dare not,
for what would i discover
but wormlike attributes,
and who would ever
discover
anything
inside a worm but
defeat in its own birth,
ostracism for having
been derived from something
so lowly as a
creature without limbs,
which eats,
yes eats,
the very black vile
we stomp our mighty
feet upon.
but,
remember,
worms have many hearts
(four or five,
however many) and therefore,
more blood to spill.
and so,
from that logic springs forth
the idea
that the blood of an earthworm
(in comparison
to its body)
flows four
or five
times as heartily,
more guiltily.
but no guilt touches the ones
who scream and swerve as they run,
avoiding death scene after
death scene in the
short films of worms' lives.
it confuses me, however,
how these worms came to be
lying dead atop our
artificial turf,
for isnt it fact that
a worm comes to
the surface
when the earth floods, and
so isnt it fact
that artificial turf does not flood
(for it is solid and immovable
through and through, and
so no worm's tunnel
can penetrate the
hard rubber) and
so isnt it
mysterious
that these creatures
have risen to the surface
from a subterranean lair
that doesnt exist?
pondering this,
i stop and i let the rest
run past me,
kicking up
brown water with an odor unknowable--
the stench of death in summer.
i look down to the
ghastly sight, and
i know suddenly that
worms have hidden
and that rain has found and
injured them,
and that we have dismissed and
killed them.
and i think to myself,
i know why worms hide.  
knowing this,
i look up to continue
trampling these mockingbirds
of the dirt
(for who would take pity on a girl
taking pity on worms?) but
i stop when i see a young
boy lingering on
the side of the track,
studying the turf
i so carefully studied
moments before.  
i study him.
and i see him delicately
scoop up a worm,
wriggling at life's end,
hold it between
his fingers high in the
air
like a golden chalice
to be blessed,
and drop it whole into his open mouth.