For years I’ve zealously
watched my back
because I know they are looking
for my wings with a knife.
As if it was dangerous
to go through life as a shepherd of clouds
or ruffling the hair of store-front dummies
catching the scent of souls in torment
thirty kilometres away.

I’ve seen a man
chewing his toenails
in a dark basement
filled with scorpions
and birds in mourning
chasing my hands
asking the dead
where the young poet
with the tough verses
lives.

And there’s no way out of it:
if I hide, they land;
if I squat down, they fly over,
and digging with a chisel
through the everlasting garbage
right down to the roots of the teeth,
they weave and then untangle
the sticky dirty
freezing web.