Que Syria Syria ~Ken Babstock

Photo by Chris Knight on Unsplash

Slide whiste and shit bucket. We'll do 
our own rendition. Convictions, like haircuts,
hold true until the morning they don't.
I'll be proved wrong down the road --
not far down the road, mind you;
likely just past the next gum coin,
before that streetlight retrofitted
to look more lampish. Why are disarticulated
feet washing ashore in their Nike carapaces
like hermit crabs adjusting to habitat loss?
The North Pacific Gyre spits out basketballs,
pen caps, rat-tail combs for the well-behaved
and habitually cagey. Kids, eh? I could have
taken prisoners but lack administrative skills,
all those numbers followed by letters followed
by answering to Amnesty and ghosts
bringing in ghosts that exit as corpses.
I have my suspicions. It's just I doubt their validity.
I take my legs off above the knee, lean
both against the armoire, and slide in Chopin
while tomorrow balls up its tinfoil and begins to chew.