From the warm and noisy dark I watch,

from within a gentle fuss of feet and squeaking,

the resolute stars. And I watch you.

You are beautiful, like newborns. Your eyes move slowly,

you walk without fear past terrible animals

wearing garish coloring, with words.

Even when the animals kill you, shitting you

out as smoke, you post black words on white squares

to mark your deaths, and carry on walking

jogging, whistling, lugging around the cubes of music.

Oh, your pointless music! It builds structures

in our minds, tall and interlocking,

and reminds me of your black glass buildings, tall and interlocking

which we hide from, or under, and do not understand.

Do you understand? I doubt it. Yet you have the force of mind

to muscle the earth into that form, and we do not.

I have a confession: I wish I were strung like a wire

inside one of your fancy brains: rigid, nose to tail

so I could feel the quickness with which you think,

the deftness with which you pile your beliefs atop one another

until you have made platforms out of air.

Perhaps they will hold, and lift us & the mounds of termites all

to the ceiling-glow of the stars. I don't think on it much.

Once when I was a youth, I smelled something acid and new.

I bit down, and tasted sharp fat orange.