The Walk
How do you
feel I ask
as an affirmation of
the good,
“So, overall, you’re good?”
riveted by Walser’s brush
stroke,
your hand mine
the sound of tires on gravel
the silence of feet
in the space between
that know the way
endless stores
cafés
they pass us by
they are the same / Walser is the same
again,
again,
you point,
“there”
for there
and there
and there
I hold the stern
to keep the tires still
pedals aiming at
the window glass
of that store,
any
my eyes following
the cracking light :
yeah,
here—
Thou Shalt Not
You do not talk about
Afghanistan,
Tom says,
pulling at his
civilian
home-for-the-month uniform :
jeans & button-down,
IPA bottle-cap between
the forefront of his teeth / lower lip,
bulging
my friend
Scott calls it a pragmatic
thing, more than
an ethical one,
I sit between
the two,
contemplating:
I.
if x, not y is justified
just in the case that
x = y =
surviving doing the ethical thing
then,
survival instincts & Practical Ethics,
necessarily
mutually exclusive,
II.
or are we never talking
about anything other
than a hidden conditional?
Ama sua
Ama quella
Ama llulla
Don’t steal = If I steal from you, you will steal from me
Don’t lie = If I lie to you, you will lie to me
Don’t be lazy = If I’m lazy, you will not make community with me
III.
Work in the
survival part of it:
Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill.
IV.
Tom says
airborne landing is a
bitch,
+10% casualties
& you got yourself an investigation.
Not at 9.9999.
Vanessa Gubbins at age 8 in Lima, Peru had a pseudonym planned for her first published anything. Vanessa Gubbins at age 23 in New York, NY has decided to stop warring with names. She promises that this is her "real" one.