KLEPTOMANIAC
I work in acquisitions, I suppose…
All I know is, the world’s a confusion
of Penrose steps,
a disharmony of tuning up.
I can’t see unity. My garden is disquieted
by the red of dogwood,
bamboo shivers,
and squalls of snowflakes menace branches.
So that must be why my fingers itch,
my lips tingle.
These tiny nicks and pinches soothe me.
I guess I just have magnetic digits,
I’m a sprite who turns
invisibility’s prison into sport,
I steal between the lattice work
of snowflakes.
Really I just rescue helpless nouns.
Your detritus which you cast down,
refuged in my soft, dark pockets.
Just a pen to you.
But to me, the hardness of carbon chains, polymers
plasticized and hanging from their backbones,
of paperclip garlands that make stars
to hang in
the firmament of my universe. I navigate
with astrolabes,
engraved in the liquid script of an Arabian hand,
a heaven which can be interpreted
and embraced,
before Hades reclaims what is his.
Sometimes you don’t even notice these things are gone.
Sometimes you rage and ask the air, ‘Why?’
You can’t hear me above the hum of the electrics,
‘I couldn’t help it,’ is my reply.