If the tiles of talking
are replaced by something else,
say, lexical snowflakes,

where will our linear minds be?
It's not that we don't understand
weird, multifoliate simultaneities

in dreams, in anguish,
or in ecstasy. It's just
the rest of the dumb time

we stand there and pull
from our mouths a usual
piece of numb string.

It starts in other countries, in other states, in other cities. We see it on the news. It doesn't affect us. When it happens to somebody we know, we grieve for them, but we won't look them in the eye.

Only when the pain and surging, suffering tide of the escaping masses comes to break down your door, will you then say, "There is no shelter here. This is MY home, stay here no more!"

And they will all cry,
"No, it is YOU that has no shelter here! Why did you look away when they went for your neighborhood?"

Yelling back as you remind,
"Did you not turn them away the same as I, to deny them brotherhood?"

By then it's too late.
Misunderstood, we run but can't hide.
There will be no shelter here.

Again, the path of pink, crystalline, digital highway twirling its corkscrew all around,
close, as if it were my eyes themselves, the only thing to see for miles and miles,
blistering by at a breakneck pace and straight through me. There's only sweat and
the highway. The days are long and the nights are not at all. Just the pink on
black for miles and miles. When, where will I be when the road ends? I know
what I'll be doing, that's for sure.

Excuse me sir, but
My life's been turned upside down
I've moved twice this year
You just stab me in the heart
And expect me to function?