Spike

A man outside a junkyard stops traffic
just by standing in the road.
A direction most ignored for better views
of yellow orchards down the other way.

The man doesn’t walk right, it’s like
his legs are twisted up somehow,
and he staggers off the pavement
when his point is made but I don’t
understand it.

Just focus on the hour if you have to,
so that you never get a sense of all eternity.
Gas station managers smoke
Black and Milds out of habit
in the empty parking spaces,
and when the people finally show
they’re unrelenting.

I compare my soul to almost everything
including the smoke stains
on the wallpaper in her apartment.
The more you know about
what you have the easier it is to waste.
That’s why being taught can sometimes
kill the subject, like a spike
that pulls the blood out of the brain.

I don’t want to start over
on this pier while all the catfish
fight for garbage,
and the atmosphere just magnifies
the sun, I want to run to where
I know that there is no one,
and remember what it feels like
to be absent from this world’s
misunderstandings.