The Virus Called Smith


Sometimes, at the end of a day,
the dream is of ashes in the yard.

A white dog
with sorrowful eyes,

hunting near parked cars.
Howling as if he’d never lived.

It’s true.
The weather turns so quickly.

The cold that was meant
to be bracing,

is too delicate, and scorching—
a lesion upon the verge.

And the buckets
that we took from the reservoirs,

so dark, so fleeting,
that we had no fear—

hold nothing except lures.

                          * * *

The thrust has taken us far—
from islands

of refused delusion,
to horizons rimmed by kerfs of snow.

Inside the matrix
that contains the all: a window with no views.

In the real world, after all,
each escapee falls, then wakes up

not far from a shingle shore.
Drunk and naked among nettles,

and wishing themselves home
after the hazy night before.

                          * * *

Two servings
of rum vindaloo won’t help us.

And the water
that we laved in handfuls,

now coils in the jars,
dirty, surreal, unknown.

There’s no escaping it,
we’re happiest when we drink alone.

When we turn to go back,
we take so many pills we open a magic door.

Agent Smith’s tumbling eyelid
in plain sight, sunk in a single form.