-tegucigalpa, honduras
someone has snagged my clothes,
made off with my favorite hat,
purloined my tape player,
and the only witness
is a scraggle-faced cat,
who wanders these poorly tiled hallways
to feast on lesser rodents.
someone has taken my backpack,
vanished my boots,
and, perhaps worst of all,
someone has fled with my copy
of "world's end," by neruda,
in order to hold that sacred scripture
as a paper-backed hostage.
it seems, all i can do is stare down
the cell, and pretend that quasi-mattresses
have a voice, imagine that the lonely,
dust-dumpy lamp in the corner
had any choice.
this is a city that condemns its young
before they can even
inhale breath one,
a city where bored men with shotguns
guard even the most unglamorous shoe store.
there is a large statue of the savior
that looms, over a park that parches green,
pretending to bless
a place that can only be cursed.
the airport here is considered
the most dangerous on earth,
the frayed limbs of jets
that did not make it
litter the grass nearby,
souvenirs of error.
someone, somewhere, has my
sunglasses, the ones with silver rims,
and he is probably wearing them
in the back of a pickup,
bouncing over ruts and dodging cattle,
probably, on the way to the coast.
