manipulations

among easy-fitting threads
beer bottles tied between
outtakes of envisioned realizations—

love
sunlit limbs
rolling eyes

dead now

escaping
the narrowly shattered wastelands
pinned between walls

yes
a delicate destruction

that city

that year i spent lingering
till the cool breezes of mornings
speaking of the various opportunities
and various exceptions in that city—

you could always find villagers
grinding against the firm night
enacting paperback stories
in other languages
tied up in bundles

take for instance
the stranger versions of Gulliver's Travels
or procreation for that matter
bartenders stuffed into beer bottles

to escape that city
you had to file the forms
you had to pay in kilometers
negotiate what seemed to be
a heavy settlement

a few soiled bills and worn-down coins
a ratty backpack

the bus ticket was yours

wastelands opportunities

whores with their theories
of kilometers and disease
played and provided

when stiffed
they distanced themselves
from negotiated hands

they rolled me over
for no more reason
than an unmoving beer

wastelands opportunities
depended on bus tickets
ground into pockets

hands travelling across eye sockets
empty beer bottles

the bartenders escaping
that complicit city of love and procreation
with their old devices of dead wars