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Life is a great belt, but often too tight,
so tight that chubby bellies poke out even more;
zeppelins in the burning stomach, hot air balloons
rush out of the mouth. If men were
more nurturing, women would be scaling
a new landscape, like slaves in the
old days rushing to the Golden Gates
of the north.

Life is a great belt or a clear plastic bag
that has been washed. If only we could
wash the dry dollar bills & pull them out
as modern architecture. There is a reality
in parallel worlds, because

life is a great belt. A sense of reality is
advanced from things that would disappear
like looking through a clear plastic bag.
Who is brave enough to venture to say
what life is like?

A body like ancient Rome, a sound
of thunder irreparable, needles in the
stomach where "hope" is a jump-rope
that I tie to my ankles to gain a consequence,
to destroy the expectation that I may tumble—
a threshold of incorrect rattling.

Life is a great belt. A Grandmother
softening you up with a smile. Snapshot facts.
The way dust is sequestered, becomes
a singing atmosphere of a beautiful voice
that comes & takes you away.

Life is a great sweltering jolt in
a maternal jewel. To take part in conversation,
to see it destroyed slowly over time...
so slowly that it cannot be neglected.
Behind every island, someone is attempting to
invent a new future. This is not life, because

life is a great belt, tracing the roots of
ones mid-sectional sophistication
like freeway traffic. Life is doin' the twist,
a particle of a narrative, a never-ending plot
trudging against our aging bodies.