Some of them cry, some run, others forget
their names or take new names,
some grow thin as air.

Some of them turn religious, others categorically
reject the existence of god, some pray
and some even kneel; some curse,
though it seems like they’re praying; some live
inside a mute woman’s fishbowl.

Some chase after the words there is no such place if they’re
blue; some waver, wondering.

It can happen anywhere: at the movies when the light
is unreal; facing a cashier as she returns
the change, under the longest skies; among bodies
deliciously nude on some beach
in the Mediterranean; on a romantic date, whether
in love or without love, while planning one’s own murder
or someone else’s; when going to work or coming back from work;
when peeing loudly in tile bathrooms
of perfectly aligned pink symmetry.

It can happen at any hour, any time of day is
auspicious: sometimes in the morning under the anemic light
that filters through December blinds; or certainly
in the afternoon when reality turns
to mirage, a thing-in-itself, an undesired inclination;
but always at night whether in sleep
or in the lack of sleep when language expands
and the clocks stop time.

Some of them drink mint tea or orange tea
or jasmine tea in October’s lap, some are dying
for French fries; some collect dragonfly wings
beneath the slimmest of unmoving mattresses; some
prefer gin and not beer; some like
coffee from Java before dawn, others smoke a little
marijuana or two packs of Marlboro Lights: 
gray strands of sacred smoke all around; 
still others opt for careless colored pills or valium
or three hundred aspirin.

It causes amnesia, insomnia, aphasia, bulimia, anorexia
panic attacks, incontinent laughter, itching
in strange places, essential tremors
of the hands, purple lashes, bags under the eyes, flaccid thighs
and breasts, ugliness in the most varied of forms,
faces of onion-thin skin so transparent and tight
and smooth that they provoke fear or pity or very different 
kinds of human wonder.

Some of them are found on the corners,
biting their nails with eyes fixed elsewhere;
some count on their fingers and forget numbers; others sweat
or stroke their wrists with rusty blades,
oh so softly; some become guerilla fighters,
avid Marxists, anarchists, artists; some
in fact disguise their pain and speak of exotic
orchids in faraway landscapes; some can even pass
for normal men and normal women; some
are nice.

Some still search for those corners.
Some even run two or three kilometers per day
chasing those corners.

They always ask for the closest door,
the emergency exit, the easiest way or the
hardest to get to that place, the next one, 
the greener-than, the true one.

Some welcome bums in the night as if
they were courting anomalies and scars; 
some gather adolescent drug addicts or old
lovers or women afraid of empty
closets; some attract young men with arms
so long that they end up embracing nothingness.

Some talk incessantly.
Some stay silent incessantly.

Some suffer stomachaches, shortness of breath,
too many languages, migraines, violent attacks
of shyness, discrimination, asthma, palpitations,
stereotypes, too many languages, bad breath, broken bones, 
nostalgia, acne, poor memory,
too many languages.

They suffer incessantly.
They hurt themselves incessantly.

They speak to the trees in the language
of trees and to the grass in the language of grass,
to women in the feminine wave of words
and to men in the virile skeleton key of letters.

They live in Babylon and Alexandria and New York and Tijuana.
They live in two countries at once.
They swing, snap back, leap, fly, and return.
They’re here and they’re not here; they’re there and not here
and also not there.

They speak of themselves in the third person, the plural as a metaphor.
They dance on the head of a pin.

They know the gravity of things.