There is no shape

             that the words carve out

                to match the roar I anticipate

                   in waiting to hear

A city a man
no more
a wilderness of men and (women)
a structure
structure-less
sought where it isn't
mown

The only garden
a Dunkin Donuts
never closed
always clean
the young girl behind the counter
who smiles and speaks
in a language
I cannot understand (and still the women's bathroom is out of order - something is amiss in paradise)

Against the grass uncut as mist falls bending light over wrappers and cans round beneath the rusted bridge where a man hangs by a cable

There too i think i have an idea for a poem something to get this voice of the moment to put it down to map it out when the reality is maps litter the backseat taken from the center where the man speaks a history that turns in and over itself wrapping me by in squares lines and names that do or don't

There's no way out of this place but living in a roar of fevered streets alive in the light alive in the dark where there never was a poem to begin with

Only a winding NJ turnpike scattered with ridiculous $0.35 tolls