big box block

Been around the big box block many times,

and every time someone tells me: “Alter it,

my sweet big’un.” But the lawyer’s paid up and the bird of prey soundtrack

now plays all year round at the windswept P.O. downtown

Flags fly, flies flag on humid faces

black top holidays strain

through lanes of traffic

Some people are poets

the way I see it, the wind blows through everyone’s sails

enough times to know what he means when he says “whipping up duck butter.” It’s just a

matter of seeing an open lane and flying through

the guy from the dealership bringing me home.

Drive straight, unencumbered by on-board guides who think they can

tell you which way to blow

wicker, the water stagnates nearer and farther from

The refinement. “The blows,” the low man on the totem pole

Says, showing a mean fly ball

each time in a whirring of wings

dusk gobstopping the field, I got that feeling again—the dealer

long departed, my ship waiting in the wings, poets blipping the radar.

The winds of change blow in, flapping those flags, moving that

water. Despite all the wind, however, these people drove

the Wicker Man away a long time ago and look what happened. What’s left?

Dead grass and flying downtown buttresses, barely holding up

what remains of our freak flags flying