Football

I got dressed up very very nicely today. Tie, vest, white shirt. I looked good. I put on my new rain coat. My new shoes. I walked to work. I walked home.

In New York there is a lot of police tape. The yellow kind. You ignore it and go about your life.

I walked pass some. And saw a sign with burning candles. Saw a wet sidewalk. It hadn't really rained all day

I noticed I was walking through a pool of fresh blood.

My new shoes left little red footprints for a few steps.

This was a new thing for me. A new kind of 'city living moment'.

The poem below is about death. Not the one I walked into today. One I drove near 5 years ago.

I came upon a dead deer. t looked alive. The fur shone like a coat in a closet.

I wanted to set it up on its legs and send it on its way.

Leaving those red footprints today. Passing a grocery store clerk who signed a gun shooting at me as I passed...

I wanted to right so many things. And I felt silly for feeling like that.


Football 5/19

There is that in the gut and
            there is the ball-shaped thought also

Filling a pregnancy a worry in
            the void, cirrhosis of emptiness

A dead body begins to swell a
            ball shape bouncing, your ear to it

Air mistaken for breathing
            for oneself, the sound, rupturing cells