My ears fill up with
oceans, potholes, marijuana
Empty things
Sticky things
And what’s left of me in the morning
hums the songs that soldiers sing
remembers you in little photographs
Has dreams of enlisting
And my heart swells up
With the August fruit flies
And the spots in my eyes.
I looked up out of the hollow
and I thought of that dying cockroach
On my well-ran road
And the wound that festers in my glove
That yawning knuckle
And the cockroach didn’t think of me
Couldn’t hear the music
His is a fight all consuming
As is mine.