eight chairs to either side - written over the course of this sunny spring Saturday




eight chairs to either side 
of a wooden table reflecting 
flourescence from the sheen 
of fresh varnish

chairs to be populated 
with all manner of sitters
conversing and reading and
texting and eating and heads

down on arms sleeping and 
worrying and crisis-broken 
and crisis-driven and crisis- 
causing and crying and 

laughing and giggling
and talking with tormented 
invisible companions
but all this is the stuff

of commerce and stiff
competition for sitting space
in a clean, warm, well-lit place
and gives commerce its death-

stretching, life-taking blood
when to sleep ‘neath the stars
means on concrete ‘neath a bridge
and I’ll swim through mud

to make this point, and once
the mud is hosed from my body 
with fire hoses will the scars
begin to firm and take shape

and color and assume the design
of letters to form words to build
these lines, the last of which
you have just read, yes
                                                

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