Look The Other Way

I win a prize, a trip for two, to a glamorous spot. I accept the prize and go by myself. At dinner, across the table in the outrageous restaurant, I gaze into a stranger's eyes. I have made them black for soul, blue for tomorrow, green for something positive to watch. Growth changes the wrong things. Magic bites back. This morning out the window, the raccoon tribe held up signs for me to read but the messages were in a language I don't know. Paris is like that, they tell me, on the phone from Calabria. One never knows, does one? Intensities melt into boredom. Anguish becomes the punchline. Static interrupts the moon, well, it would. I mean, the moon, give me a break. I was only seventeen, that time I learned everything I knew was wrong. Endings always arrive before they should, or after. Say it twelve times and you teleport out of now. Don't try this at home, kids, the mouth is always open, waiting. Waiting for the wafer on the tongue, waiting for the blessing that does not come.