I roam the old city, gazing at Gothic gargoyles and touching stonework made by men long since dead, wondering how I ended up in this chunk of time, rather than one in which this land was all just forest or marshland, or one in which we all wait amid the rubble to blast off to some secondary hive of humanity.
If you can dance in wild, weird ways,
then you are truly free.
If you can’t, while you’re home alone,
you’re a bodily detainee.
A prisoner of life, itself —
a man who never was —
a tragic figure cut from plans
who will do, but never does.
I saw a field — once sunflowers —
now reaped at harvest time.
Just stiffened stalks and wrinkled leaves,
and one head past its prime.
Those glorious yellow petals,
drooping — facing the ground,
were the only way I knew the
crop that’d been mowed down.
How sad to be a survivor
who lives by a bowed head
once the ones that faced the sun
have joined the newly dead.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 