The Blasphemy of Exchange

As a certain standard of the equation,
these jingling mustard-colored coins
now set to the table, like gold or caps
from bottleheads, shuffle the dust up
among us, with our breaths, while our
hands, too young and too old to shake,
still succeed in catching this mess,
the slow and weighed-in anxiety--a bubble
waiting to be popped and evaporated.

We pass pressures between ourselves.
To comfort, we sneeze, we transfer our
other likenesses onto other bodies.
The teal euphoria becomes blank space
wanting nothing more than to behold serums
to certain poverties, before bowing to
our favored, well-time distractions--blue
funnels of the brain. A light "achoo" escapes.

Like the way of art, or the way an
unsuspector tiptoes atop an exploding
landbomb, its peasant limbs frayed and
shredded into rain and organic
fertilizer, we touch in sad, electric waves.
We touch in the method of fingertips,
feeling corners of molded paper. We touch
each other with eyes looking like soaked-parchment.

Soaking up residue in each ocular corner
is the easiest cover into looking beyond,
to pretend to look, to want to look into a
patron's smile or a manager's gray grimace,
to find another way of staring straight,
at those two stable, staring stones. Or
to reach the bridge of the nose, end of world,
and help fight soft blasphemies out of awareness.

To say "I do" is to listen but attentively.
To say "I don't" is to start jabbering on,
while the other pod in the same pea is prodding.
Both piddling idioms being dominant, first-person.

(0)

Diffuse by reaching back. Curl forward flaps, and gain
admission to the greeny pearl, so pretty, waiting
inside for fresh air, firm palms, forced scratches.

(1)

Stare at the rooftops begging for a monster to
find you and jump down, open claws made of grain,
ready to snatch your wallet or purse, your finance,
before letting go and scampering to find another.

(2)

Stamp off through leaves and scattered litter and
begin the repeat, this time with your house keys
in hand, or clenched between the teeth to taste,
bag hidden in a tree's hollow or a brick's splice.

(3)

Between the stormdrain they dropped, forgotten,
and your body too is pushed; like an acorn or
political leaflet it rolls or is carried away,
or is trodden upon like ink stamped to tops of hands.

(4)

The finality is to beg. Beg to know those dollars
you spent and you gained went into the black
of the stirred pool, like a cake or gunpowder,
or like a confectious spread made of cream cheese
and pineapple, ready to be nutted, ready
to be turned into a fruitful world with ups,
downs, and the wan wail to which hunger jumps,
before taken away with an instant chomp, goodbye.

(5)

The bohemian attractions tend to settle, to smooth.
Reality never was rent money due, gifts to purchase.

To realize letters require postage, to see time
reach out and grace with chewed nails again.

Dimes and nickles swirl the great air, creating
forms of this figure, a forge of the self, a mimic
dancing robotic and longingly. There are hints
of blood when smiling though these lips are not
like the rest of them. They are mangled and apart.

These lips--chapped through and through--will
bend those customers' eyes, clean the countertop.