Nútungktatoka

Material matters will be destroyed
by spiritual beings who will remain
to create one world and one nation.

Hopi Prophecy

Things spill out with frequency,
especially childhood beatings and secrets.
Remember when you used to lie
on your back on grass
and play with the clouds?

   Now find a seat on the salt train and
   watch your face get pulled by wires across a cloudless sky.

These gray heavens
shower my accomplishments,
but beyond the quivering magnolias
the ocean laughs.  I fill my life with little miseries,
trying to disguise surface weaknesses.
Does what's on the inside trickle out
and spill into morning coffee,
me drinking my reflection
again and again?

See the skeletons dance their dance for flesh.
They move like the rivers move
beneath this city, quiet and desperate.
Overhead, a plane does its mock planet routine.
The moon pulls our bodies over walls,
joins our shadows.  Horizon bleeds, spills twilight.
The sky?  In pain.

   I hurry my crabmeat self
   over the bones of the forgotten,
   foraging for things I don't understand,
   things that won't resist my claws.

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