Dame Una Empanadilla

We stopped halfway to Granada
at Casa Marcos. Half an hour wait.

There was a flood of orders
at the counter for ten minutes.

Feet wandered the parking lot
recirculating blood, long settled

from the small seats. The eyes,
the eyes of chickens wandering

the farmyard. No one knew what to do.
Mobiles the only solace. The soft blanket

of technology over our eyes and ears
and mouth. I overhead English.

I overheard talk of camping.
It was a brief pause

in the lives of valiant bus riders
and then the farmer arrived.

Lunar Worms

(from the moon series)

crawl in and out of craters all night long,

slime trodden across the long arch of the sky

bridled by gasoline and moon dust.

Squirm through the tunnels of the great orb.

Carry passengers from one vacancy

of a city to another. Hurry to empty

the future of the immense object of gravity.

Bite and tear the innards with fierce devotion.

Burn themselves in half to get the job done quickly.

Guilty Moon

(from the moon series)

slinks into view. The prison bar stars
conceal a weeping face.

What do the choices of a lifetime
look like? The mountains impossible

ascent. The vast untamed oceans.
The hurricane's insistence. Slowly

climbs the arc. Paces the 8 x 10 concrete
cell. Looks out an iron grated window.

Tries to see the sunlight and fails. For
the earth is in the way. For humanity

is thrust in its face. For six billion voices
all yelling shame at once. For

the consciousness that melts to a dim wick
each month, becomes a faint shadow

of a ghost in the night sky. Broken down.
Solitary confinement. Ground to the root.

Empty. Unmotivated. Unheard. Unmooned.
Reflects the dirty face in the muddy water

as it rises invertedly, crawls under the apex
of society. A lone fault amongst millions.

A soul choice mistaken
and burned at the stake by the state.