10-tranquilizers and other institutions

at life’s beginning,

understanding hieroglyphics

is a nasty frontier

obvious as an urge

to burn a dream

to charcoal and smoke.

and armed with ashes

of possibilities

and summers

of wintry hope,

you light an unfiltered cigarette

to the memory of achy time

with fingers

that always flip

to the last chapter;

fingers that have grown old

without growing up,

leaving seasons

unmoved.

and naïve.

and sensitive

as arthritic knuckles,

thinking disfigurement

has no odor,

selling pain

that never belonged to them

in that room where books lie

open. and

day after day

the olympic efforts of light

to move in a straight line

while at the same time

avoiding the crumbling rosetta stones

of your hands,

go unnoticed.