[ _____ ]

The movie theater in my head is painted—for the time being—a green

The shade of a blooming southern magnolia bud,

Nearing development, soon to touch light,

Ready for the projector to hum on and say hello.

In the exterior I force everything to comply

To a rigid schema I did not develop;

Inside my pathways lie

Unsegmented and flowing freely.

A photograph gets taken by my eyes,

And the subjects hardly know or care,

And I rip it up and drown it in Guinness

almost as soon as I see it to spare

Them from having to be.

My recording ears and my watchful glares and my poor rhymes and my listless rambles

Always begin again anew

As they remind me to pay attention,

And I am refreshed by sparrows and cats that cling to trees and the ghost ants that colonized my sills.

Unmetered, unpaved, unbroken,

I dance to a song I have yet to write,

And the dogs and flies and spiders and trees

Sing along as I cannot.

Pray often then, friend,

For me and everybody you know

Who smokes,

and drinks,

and screams,

and stresses,

and behaves as though there is no time limit.