Nervous Birds

Midnight,
under street lamps shot out,
I smoke what the children sell
with the attention span of nervous birds,
bobbing and crackling between
three-word slurred staccatos.

Inhale heat and humidity
and adjust a belt
old before its time fantasy.
Girls on the red carpet service, worn,
pace to and fro and smile
and bend over negotiating
the hardcore for a few nickels more,
through window pane roll-downs
and wide-eyed shallow breaths.

Moon fall on main
outside Arafat’s diner,
after a stack, short, smothered
in post industrial devotion,
thick and chunky,
and unborn, un-feathered gleams
in rooster red’s mornin’ tour.

Heart fillin’ wrigglin’ up the
Center of my nerve network,
and the memory of Easter Sunday
at grandma’s, on double yellow pages,
surrounded with victims of
youthful vengeance,
and droopy-eyed
Adam and Eve not speaking,
post Saturday with the boss hang-over.

And westward wagon prayer wheels
transcend to rubber and steel,
revolving past mundane therapy
and horsepower consumption,
as data thread stimulation
waits to be reborn
re-purposed.