Walking to the bodega,
I think about those sparrows
that run in the wind,
even when there's a cold blow
going,
and they work
like freaks
with sin on their mind.

Once I clear myself
of you,
I will write
like I used to,
I will be free
of the breakwaters
to read,
write,
and create
again, but love
or whatever-the-****-it-was,
has put a stop to
everything,
and I walk
to the bodega
with a head full of nothing;
no thermals,
no heat for me to ride, but I'm sure
I'll be okay,
I'm sure
you don't care.

I'd rather
be safe on some branch
lapping acid rain out
of a lead saucer,
than trying to ford
this river in the air
with nothing, not even a pair
of wet wings.

When I get
to the store,
I buy a pack of Marlboros
and ask
for all the lead
in the world.

He looks at me
with a screwface,
so I ask him again,
and he
says
"No loitering."

I was gonna fly home,
gonna try and test my
shoulder blades and see if maybe
I could make something happen.

But, I go to the garbage barge in the back
and sit, beside it, gravel scratching my *** with stingers,
as light scissors out of the sky;

little needles of sun in
the little oceans
in the little asphalt craters
making little,
if not any,
noise,
and I lean
drinking something slightly mean,
a forty and another in the bag,
because it usually helps in these situations.

I left my wings somewhere
and I cry there,
cry because I'm
stranded
in a place that I have never been,
with all the light in the world
and no place to put it.

I murked out,
at some point.