Deep Cover Costumes
Surely the body is made
of stranger
things than politics
can steal:
the tangled
residue of stars,
the plastic
bag and orange
peels I kick past
the bridge,
flaming nerves splayed
across ancient and forgotten
avenues, the stomach-heavy goodbye
to others that always
feels a limit
on anyone’s remaining days
I see now
I really did
believe that the stories
of languages breaking
open the embedded
money source
were the victory
of changing grandeur
over the paltry measured
ties misnamed time—
I could never believe
that people meant the counting,
the stacking, the definitions
the dividing,
that those could be more
than misunderstanding
even when
burned in iron;
The world is simply not
anything any of us
say of it
our names are strange delusions
pulling us back
from a brink we are always
falling through—
it has no shape
no words
it is
not a brink
we are not
anyone there is
no falling