The illusion of city dissolves
To gray cloud that gives nothing back, like coffee
Served black. The falseness was effervescent,
To watch who I'm not dance with what can't be
As if it's already happened, as in
Selectively remembered stories, themselves lies.
Instead, the shapes form themselves, and move on
Their own with the same disregard that you have
For what holds you down and what pulls you along.
In each face that walks by, though, is a promise
Of something to be known, some uncanny
Experience to make you feel less alone.
It floats in the vapors of the late sun still,
The persistence of nothing. For you offered
Whatever it was that you had to that
As if it was the same, as if it was different,
As if it was something, but that was
The one thing you could never ask of it.
There's too much that is real in the ethereal
Realms, in this slow, heavy town there's only
A train, moving through, and all manner of
Ribbons and stones to jiggle in the sun,
Not to give the doomed here hope, but to share
The unyielding feeling that they've been cheated.
Another city emerges, bathed in white light,
Streets empty enough to walk through the dream
Where one foot in front of the other has meaning
And all that it has -- uniquely -- is available
In the mind, a private Winnebago ...
If what you never could imagine would only exist.
