when the air starts to bite
your lungs like horseradish
your breath goes only so far before your chest
stops rising against imaginary hands
block's a ghost town and that
industrial wasteland by the post office tumbles even more weeds.
step by step, one sneakered foot
hopscotching its way in front of the other
--step on a crack and you'll break your mother's back--
until the chalk like fairy dust encounters a used condom
sandy, gritty, the residue of cement and a bright blue
wrapper a few fractures later.
the gray sky rumbles over the games we play
but our daring paws call heaven's bluff
and we pad up to those streets with the big
houses and trees and ivy snaking up bricks
curvy vines hissing like a snake's tongue
--look, but don't touch--
go home to your dead neighborhood
because here the anaconda strangles
the fat man who walks his tiny dog
the viper's venom intoxicates
the anorexic mermaid staring out the green glass window
wasting down to the floating ribs
of the turret of your childhood dreams
if you're here after dark they release the hounds
so your cobra traces its spiral
downwards into the woven basket towards
a quiet cul-de-sac
where quiet crimes
and broken windows
and boarded-up doors
and rotting porches
disintegrate in stilted
stifled time
companions to a sullied rubber who resists a million years
of the flautist's invocation
to biodegrade
