DIRTY SKY:

Breaths, coughs, regurgitations of inner biologies, infection.
The air percolates, twelve hours straight, flying East to greet a
rising sun. Cooled in air-conditioned bliss shuttle bussing, between
sky holes, transferring sweat & herding scuffed luggage. Skimming
burbs roasted in 37 degrees of terminal heat.
Shepard sleepers slumped on brutal airport benches. Mind their
bags & watches, watch the time. Two hours sleep in 24, hallucinating
flat screen commercial loops. The same girl faking golf, the same
tempting image of a bed for hire somewhere near, the same doctor
pointing at the same charts, cutting the same hole in the same
faceless patient, only one of them smiling for the flash.
Then another another hole, another jump, the coughing & the sneezing
resumed behind cotton masks. Scalding green tea spilled down an arm
& bootleg Dylan #7 to relocate the world to the other side of the
bubble. Landing in air as cool as Essex on the sweetest day.
Walking out into the night, electric, hairs up on the backs of necks
& hands. Greeted by the waiting embrace of a friend.

(K)