final

*frankfurt airport, business class lounge. some time on may 8th, as i wait to take my second leg home from India*


The moon refused to chase me yesterday.
I craned to watch out my window
expecting to see it speed just behind the bus--
but the grin of that Cheshire only laughed.
And far above,
distorted and giant,
an eye winked
(a star shimmered)
and the entire sky became one face.

Tears overflow my eyes
and drip
fall
spill.

"Stop. Don't race ahead. It is still real right now."

Laugh, out loud,
and a smile cracks my freckled face--
but I can feel myself crumbling
beneath the weight of this proximity.
Will I remember the child brown and shoeless
wading through garbage and shit,
hoisting her sister on her own three year old hip?

I am a sieve.
And I am filtering--
against my will, the course from the fine--
images of the land of color and filth.
As one, it pumps as a single unit:
simultaneously the peak
and the plunge of human existence.

Should it remain fully tainted?

There is dirt in the pours of my feet,
spotting my toes
like the negative of lice on a bald black head.
Dirt in the cracks of my toenails:
scratch behind my ear and my fingers turn black.
Like ants
in my breakfast,
beads of grime roll and scamper down
my arms and legs
spill out of my navel
cascade down my face.
Pool at my elbows and knees,
collect into a river of grime and then
spills over--
rushes with white churning energy
down
down
out
and down.

Each hair stands on end
each one a vessel
for my human aqueduct to carry what memories
I have into and out of the vault of my brain.

Hair toes fingers are the deltas
from which ants dirt lizards grit
cloth color powder
plastic shit bottles
shoot in one hundred
separate
directions each landing in a place
I could call home.

My body sweats these creatures and filth
as it sifts through what has been real.
No longer absorbing dirt
I now extract an essence not my own--
or newly my own:
as such profoundly disturbing.

Crane around a brown neck to see
the familiar face of the sky--
but the moon would not run.

So what could I do but leave her behind?

I will try to move beyond the shock of these new nuances;
only, I can't find the door towards home.
Even as 1 billion heads nod
'yes, straight and over left (or right),'
no one can tell me where the best part of me landed
on that day 24 lifetimes ago
(or 5 months in my history)
when the grit ants shot from my toes.