art-time-collective

so then one day we come tumbling out together

the two of us

from some stuffy compartment

suddenly the whole world turns up noses 

on their fickle feeble faces

turns around and walks away

turns into an unfamiliar thing

and my god aren’t we all new here

isn’t this your first day too

(learning how the punch clock works;

taking breaks that don’t run long)

the lot of us carelessly queued

you next to i next to any

scatterbrained chatterbox who is

or who might be

talking to us right this second so

you lean around me to have a better look

while my subtle glance turns into

near-painful neck-craning as we spend

an improbably long moment gazing

scrutinizing

deciding finally

that there’s no way to know

and ultimately

no real reason to assume we ever awoke this day at all

(then, perhaps, we wake up in bed

both glaring impatiently at a pillow

moved, migrated to find itself sitting upright

and we say to each other [or we would on TV]

“I just had the strangest dream”

roll credits)

someone coughs

we hear the bus now down the street

– hydraulics letting out hiccups or sighs –

and shift lazily toward the curb

Filed under: real live art