At once, I am filled as though I were a bottle
of Coca-Cola abandoned on the road for months,
exposed to sun and air and mankind’s rages.
My stomach once hollowed
by tediums spinning like bus tires,
now grows large with a holy babe.
The cardboard cutout cars,
the faceless eyes on billboards,
the day’s important news, and the construction crews
eating sandwiches at lunch hour
all watch as I walk with a halo about my crown,
my saintly steps above tarred and leveled streets.
And though my bones still hurt, still slightly bent
by stories of collapsed yesterdays,
right now, within this hour, I am a divine and creative
coalescence of nature.
My eyes drink flower, my lips taste color,
my ears tremble at the flirtations of a rose.
Above me, beyond smoggy civility,
a wild blue bird expands perpetually,
sketching with unreachable tips of beak and wings
some bold and daring lines within my mind.
I bubble over pothole as one hand holds paper
and the other pen—past a growling pit-bull
whose spittle wets my ink.
I begin to write,
filling life’s outlines with a fizzy
scattering of conflicting colors,
mashing and melding the rabid lustful might
of the city.
Each hue is a living flame;
a poem is intoxication.
A bottle of Coca-Cola is as good as a god’s wine
when it has spirit.
