I didn’t see them,
and I’m only partially certain
that I actually heard them.

It’s been a week now,
and my body language carries
the memory better than my mind can.

Down to an hour of sleep each night. My hands shake
most mornings. They settle in the afternoons
if I use street lights to guide me. At night they go back
to shivering so much that I stay in and work on my insight
into the magic of HBO’s three a.m. documentaries.

I have three thousand and twenty-seven jokes about them.
Two thousand, one hundred and forty-six excuses,
but I’m going to keep every last one to myself.

I’d never leave the house again if I could get away with it.

It’s been a week now,
but the details may as well be fifty years old,
drenched in whiskey and prone to waking up
every day to a maddening, fresh start.

They were there.
They were real,
and I saw them.

The subway is always falling apart,
and it’s always to the rhythm of hard shoes,
suits and t-shirts that would rather die than slow down.

The miracle is that I ever make it anywhere.
There’s too many eyes to follow
and too many conversations I wish belonged to me.

I never pay attention to the right things,
and I guess that’s how I saw them.

It was only a second,
five at the most for their tired reporter faces.

I swear to you that there were a million miles
of this city, a dozen governments and three world’s
worth of life and death in their eyes.

The oldest sidewalk in town could line itself up
with candles like a confused holiday,
and it still wouldn’t be enough
for what I know they’ve been through.

Five seconds at the most,
and they were gone.

That was more than enough time.

I now have history and understanding
to last me.

I don’t want it, I don’t want it,
and I don’t want it.

I am aware that angels
have very little choice in the matter.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
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