The Parking Deck
January 20, 2015
Sallow smokers
guard the gates,
sharing flickers and fumes
before work.
They fidget
and strain to look away,
but fail to leave
their insides.
Pissed, I watch them
pace their prisons,
itching and picking,
and flicking ashes into my lungs.
They must be guarding something horrible.
Our feet and tires
chew salt.
Everyone hurries to halt.
A sphere,
now warped into a pear,
pops out sideways from a cube.
It follows me
into an elevator
and I hold a button so
the cube can join us.
We try not to intersect
sensually.
Room
after room,
after room,
after room,
of rotten wood and mud.
Like termites,
we build a mound,
a spire to a God
made of fool’s gold.
The day ends like it begins –
stamping out like we are stamping in,
keening a fine point:
we are not human.