Pastime

Get out of the way of the tidal wave,
and sit there in the sand and watch it crash
while trying to make phone calls
without cash to even hit the rate
the payphones are obsessed with.
Melt crayons against lamp bulbs
so that the light is then refracted
into colors so specific in their naming.
Burnt orange is a favorite of mine
because I like the way it draws a line
as if setting a slice of the page
on fucking fire.

Hotel pillows in the hallway taken
up by people stopping in to visit all
the elevators shaking like they shouldn’t.
The wooden fence at the edge of the parking lot
is barely even standing, but demands
that it be looked upon even if only from a distance
when the gravel hits it carried by the wind.

The inventor takes apart the robot
after several conversations
where they agreed it would be better
not to go there, but even in those talks
were lies that no one knew about.
Years later that same brain would be
in a much larger kind of body,
and the inventor would be buried
in the ground covered by glass
from all the lasers melting sediment
and sand as if the world was just
a baseball in its hand.