Waiting For The Lights To Cross

We look both ways without knowing
Within Walking Distance
is all the signs say.
The city endures months of construction
like bad television.
What we could have said
now in cement,
a lad in the tallest window,
a soggy carpet of cross-word puzzles.

Our butts have fallen asleep.
We were passport photo size
at home in the living room
and now this.
The plastic-tooth zipper
contradicts mostly the heart.


Across the street a man
pedaling his bicycle around
a toss of feathers in traffic.
His eyes saying, “They fell
and their wings are crushed,
but I could circle like this forever,”
above the nest of crying
horns and hand claps.