59 (second take)

It is the most exalted of all objects. Her name was soul, without the e. She hated it, for it proposed abstraction in lieu of a street address. The philosophical lyric suffers from a lack of smarts embedded in what the little boy calls “road bacon.” Or from an inability to spell, in the sense of spelling a teammate when he cannot breathe. My notes are breaths, the musician says, an interval of air above the line. Upwards of seven teen suicides in Palo Alto, where men in orange vests stand guard. When you lie across parallel train tracks, you make crosses. Crass underbellies of affluence. What we want for them is not to be them. The climates—economic, actual—are in free fall. Where sacred comes out as scared, you can't see beyond the scrim of your adrenaline. Because he couldn't sleep, he read about the shroud of Turin. The coroner knew he'd been on the can just before he died. A beautiful head emerges from the dark pool like a flower. If only his selfie told us where to look for him. The mountains love to death sometimes.

--13 April 2015