when a universe comes loose and hits you in the eye –
That night it rained in the desert, flooding Vegas
with real splashes, not just light. The gods of the atomic
came up from Los Alamos to cash in for the end of the world.
And as the planes hummed out over the Pacific,
as we clashed close to midnight’s stiff fingers,
one physicist put hands in penniless pockets and looked
into the worlds brushing this one in the dark, said,
“At least one of me is rich.”
And our filaments of existence have split further since then.
Today I touched mine by accident; they tangled in a cat’s cradle,
a life lived a million times, sweet and sickening like a bruise.
Like those green-hued butterflies of damage
under your eyes at breakfast, your cries catching in my throat:
“but I love her!”
Your phantom legs tangled with mine
while the rest of me rode the bus, my phantom legs
climbing the ridges of the desolate dream,
my phantom hands in the foreign boy’s hair
while your empty form thumped in longing from the closet.
Think of it: his soft accent and the generator’s singing,
the screen of rain, the white sky and blackened trenches.
I touch his thin shoulder and taste the strain of war.
Or the canine master next to me in class -
his affected strut swings to the ghost of a lone trombone
and he bears scars from a bout with his own serrated flaws.
We play a duet the size of a symphony
and the audience is blindfolded.
That world is shuttered as his heart.
In another, hearts have been eliminated
and we are run by pistons. What I wouldn’t give
to gamble away my endless beating chambers
for one smooth cheetah machine;
cars slosh the coins of my wager down the highway
from here to the edge of the world.
There are only the twinging hairs of other selves
coiled painful in my pocket.
At least one of me is rich.
