The wheels trample over hope,
they ground human minds
until they crack, until they exude
diaspora, and become sidewalks again.

The feeling
of freezepops icing the tongue
has been relinquished
because of the engine's lion moan,
suitable
for flesh and vitality.

We rumble over a bridge, the brakes reveal
their mouths and the hurt inside of them.

We lumber to a stop beside a park,
beside a bridge,
beside a river,
beside oily waters and
fire slapping the beach.

You and I,
are across the river.

There is a fountain filled with marble men
grabbing the thighs of marble women
with eyebrows wrinkled
towards their pelvis'.

If our souls could be soft again,
malleable,
we could wrinkle them in our laps
at pitstops.

I look across the aisle,
at a girl in a black pea-coat.

She knots her hands in her laps
and scratches her knuckles
with white nails.

I am
looking for the soft ore of hope
still nimble in the water fountain
of her lap,
your lap.

The engine,
this bus filled with bobbing eggs,
can break yolks.

This engine
can grind love down to a talcum,
a dust able to resign itself
to knotted hands and the jewelry boxes
of flesh.

This engine
works child's tongues in its wheels,
churning out adults,
churning out civilization,
churning out nothing.