I want to find something to fill the spaces where echos
play hopscotch with meaning, boomerang off beige walls,
slide under the doors of stunted comprehension –

somewhere far from coffee shops, café’s in which one buys
croissants, drags the emptiness of a pocketful of minutes
to a metal chair near the sidewalk painters and the traffic –

and begins another solitary game of philosophy scrabble,
fitting meaning to pieces of broken calico memory, finding soul
in street numbers and street names, love under a tablecloth –

before another red wave begins to peck away daylight
and night staggers with me, old friend, into the alley of false
godliness, shallow truth, my ears filled with liquid cotton..