Sometimes,
I’m above the ground just enough
to see the miles of black smoke down below.

Like those fire seasons that used to kill my biological father
during those British Columbia summers
that were always ending ten seconds too early.

Whatever’s wrong with the city of my dreams,
it’s definitely not a traditional fire,
and it’s clearly not the work of a drunk with a lit cigarette.

It’s coming out of the ground.
Every square inch of where the ground is presumably still standing.

Whatever city it might be,
I can never see anything more
than the way the whole thing looks like
Ancient Rome turned smokestack
against a broken labyrinth of Christmas lights.

It might be New York.
My dreams mention New York like crazy.

The dream never changes its voice.
I’m always too heavy to fly effectively.
It’s all heroic struggling and dozens of tiny horror show moments.
Each one lying down across ten years of serious respiratory problems
and crashing through plate-glass windows that lead into the great unknown.

Nothing scares me more than the prospect
of falling to the ground and getting lost
in whatever the hell happened down there.

The smoke never touches me.
It implies that it could do so at the drop of my hat
when it can no longer stand up to gusts of wind
and all those flying saucers
trying to get the hell out town before things get worse.

I have no insight into where I’m going,
where I’ve been or how I’ve managed to stay alive.

Don’t ask me how things got so terrible down there.
I just don’t know.

I always wake up
having failed to see anything
I didn’t see the first time around.

I’ve never once woken up disappointed.
Relieved would be a lot closer to it.

I’m a terminally impatient man,
but I can live with a little mystery now and then.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
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