four hours and eight months (indian giver)

what address or identity has washed
away the man-moth has eroded, too, been
re-written, the gift of his pain, the
spirit of his attempt to spread empathy, all
over-written by a fact or face perhaps,
all over-written until this moment in which
I see him again, the back of his head
is moving up the street, legs locked in
a path, northward from the center, the city
is denver, his hand
on a handle on a case, black, which fits
both his hand and a trumpet, two silver
buckles to close it, leather to bind it,
and I begin to follow him, locked step,
eyes forward, towards the red rock, time
is then being lost, this is a long walk,
and he is moving with all the stability in
the world while I follow furtively, eyes
forward toward the eyes which are forward
toward the destination which is more
forward still, and turns out to be in the
old city, the plainer city, behind a sheet
of plywood, through a hole in a fence of
knit wires, sharpened at the top, into
the dark, and I forget myself until his
blade flashes dimly and reached out to
open my forearm, and a small damp pain emerges,
to which my knee raises, to which my foot
is driven diagonally down, a noise emerges
from the hinge in his leg, and just the same
way as my foot knew where to look for his knee,
my hand, but not my eye, knows his face,
and in the only language of the dark the two
wetly and repeatedly communicate.

forty five minutes and four months (gift)

the man is unremarkable, except for his
left hand, in the path of a flame, kept
alive by wax around a wick, an old
technology, but effective, his lips
part and his tongue and teeth say
'feel this, this is a gift.' My eyes
impassive, this is an impasse, I
am no empath, still an impulse exists,
this is no exit, this is a gift, a gift
of pain and a tube of wax and a wick.