Poem #154 of 365

When the mace hits your throat you want to run away from your body and that's the same thing as panic but you stay with your nose and your tongue and all the other sinus involvement as the burning icy feeling begins to grow and extend and you wonder if or when your legs might subside under you melting you to the walkway of concrete and you won't certainly won't be able to run away from your body at that point you'll just have to sink into that whole array of uncertainty and the icy cold burn will become the whole of who you are and what you feel and the words you've read about central nervous system start spewing from your memory as you also recall that when one subway car in the tunnel breaks down well that pretty much mucks up the rest of the day for the other cars and so it's that kind of worry that sets in your face and as tunnel vision encroaches you almost forget about other people when that's precisely what you should be doing to stop the over-involvement with your own waxing distress you should be thinking about others so i look at other people keep talking to them through the papers i have cupped up to my nose and mouth i am asking them if their small children are okay and what was that stuff anyway that they sprayed and so i am kept in the loop and i fight to keep my peripheral vision expansive and selfless that's how it works that's how i keep from sinking and soon there's another outbreak it explodes in a few seconds when i see a girl bent at the waist in a geometry you don't see in public often and i think someone's pulled at her hair or arm or shirt and there's a sudden vortex of movement to the portable toilet section of that world and my toes point otherly and i take hold of my friend's arm to make sure she toes herself in the right direction too because she is not as quick to gauge the shifting increase in tension over there and so we move together with things sharp in our mouths an odorless taste that makes me not want to swallow for a long time and i believe in fresh air even when we act in opposition to the perpetuation of that in our modern lives and i cannot wait to fill my lungs with something that doesn't cut my throat or impugn my precious lung tissue on an evening that was not supposed to go this way in dallas no it definitely wasn't supposed to be like this

copyright 2007 tammy melody gomez