Smokestacks

I tend to get myself into long distance relationships, though I've never really been out of my little hometown...

every city is a song:

a melody of life and death and car horns

that worms its way into my mind

and grabs hold never lets go

until I move away, legs worn down,

and learn the new symphony,

notes strange and familiar clinging

to each other like dust on my shoes.

hum me a few bars of yours

and we’ll go get drunk in them:

plastered, blasted, hammered,

until we wobble out of them clinging

to each other for dear life

and walking along the hot syncopation

of the sidewalks, Mary Poppins-style

(and as best we can),

up the smoke and smog

rising like ink from the smokestacks,

and touch the thunderheads-

all nine of them, in fact,

and the bird-shaped puppets

strung together with fishing line
and suspended from somewhere

of no consequence

will sing a song of beeps and flourishes

as we kiss in the sky and make lightning

strike the ground below,

our electric love grounded but not fizzled out.

let’s burn everything that doesn’t matter

and let the plumes of dense dark clouds

hold us up as the city below sleeps.