I sit on this leather seat
looking out a world
this pretty, pretty strange world—
houses laden with rubble and dust, yet breathe,
paints that creep away in nights, the loyal grey.
people—oh people! So bruised
People, so tired—
Freshly moulded, boldly wounded;
Hung up on chains and dried on flames;
fed to birds while the hearts still beat.

I sit on this leather seat
looking out a world
So huge, so huge—we’re out of breath
I could dissolve myself in her shallows
could open up this skin— split me whole
vessel by vessel—poem by poem
note by note
and bury it all beneath her pages,
Taped to her empty words—forever
over hills, in windy deserts,
under dusty, unheard, seas

I sit on this leather seat
as the car goes on—
Through days and years, it goes by
going nowhere, nowhere—nowhere
so used to bumps, it barely shudders
and the world passes by,
she waves her winds courteously at us
People pass by
And the sky is still—
as birds fly along the same route-less paths
And the car goes on
as I stare out the window
at the world so huge—so mine—so not

and I could dislodge myself
scatter around the sky—all his empty depths
his silent hues—oh the softness of those lips
as they collide into her cracked moors;
volcanic oceans—barely holding on against his
— her— serenity.
I could disband this self—wave by wave
—grain by grain—thought by thought

but I sit here on this leather seat
—as all the words crumple together
Folded and squashed, squeezed to wrinkles
Like intimate threads—inseparable.
Tucked somewhere in here—old, torn clothes.
Caged—all of it.
all of it, in here.
all of me, in this tiny self.
barely—barely in—barely so.
like when he licks her dried meadows to life,
as he touches all of her, yet none
and she shudders, and houses fall, and people run
she shudders—and she shudders—and shudders
and shudders still—quietly— out of breath.
shudders — and shudders on
— never explodes.

I stare out the window of this car
at a land that never moves, never stills.