and bad company, mapped out
with aluminum cans like push pins
left as equal parts warning
signs and forensic chalk,
it's easy to mislay
the markers where
tiny ambitions wait
to die and wheeze still like
rats ankle deep in glue and cardboard,
but tuning an imagined acoustic guitar
and halfway tucked with
pen and paper lurking like
stop signs on a downhill blind sweep
along the head first
uphill road to sleep,
there is a quiet
to the air wrestling through the space heater
and a pleasure to the unrealized
cramps and rages of
navigating so many
parts and pieces
with hands already whipped
and fumbling and labor sore
and any single one
a crystalline choking hazard
waiting for the touch of tongue and gum
to come painfully undone.
