A bad beat persists and makes
time sour into films and skins.
The threads rise like steam
from the pits of graying streets
that show their red brick bones
after rains and tan cloud reflecting pools
dry away and rainbows
crowd together into nets of
concrete stippled spray insulation
against the corrugated steel
riveted to summer sky's belly.
Beneath the compression
and the rise of opportune life
formed on the surface of rot
the spores float loose and, borne
on the wind of a/c compressor
opposite box fans, they flower.
They flower and thrive and thicket and go
nowhere. Their eggshell shoots grow
long and spiny and hair feather thin and
tree limb resilient as they touch and
resume walls and window shades and
tufts of vacuum loosed coils of plastic carpet.
A bad beat persists and
numerous, transluminous against the desk lamp's
bright coiled bell, invisible in the obfuscating sun
rays that do struggle through
slats of blinds and rained out clouds,
heaped and tumbling weeds
are leaking from my head
and I've not the shears or black trash bags,
the gloves or green thumb,
to touch and corral without pricking skin
let alone their extermination.
