In between the green curves,

the road meanders through your ribs

as you walk

with your mouth wide open

to eat the air

and the different shades of green and gray.

Throw your head back and squint your eyes.

How would you look from above?

Bits of fire, carried by the wind,

vanished in the air,

seven astronauts shattered.

It's romantic, you say,

to so suddenly die

after having seen

the space far beyond the sky.

But from their shuttle, you think,

far from the green turns, the orbit, and the skies,

did they see the children die

like threads of black ants

crushed under feet,

or like some flies

squashed under a red swatter

on a hot summer day.

Perhaps the astronauts caught a brief glimpse of

the miniature corpses

spread around the ochre dry lines

on the other side of the green.

And perhaps the sight changed the color of their

hearts

right before they, too, died. 

Who knows what goes on inside.

From here, amid the fresh hills and the crisp space,

stuck to the gravel road and to the blood rushing in

veins,

dead bodies are numbers

mute astronomical statistics

thrown numbly in between black and white prints,

and devoid of stories.

How do we measure lives in between the green curves?

You tap your feet,

and your neck is stiff,

why is it that you don't hear

the sound of all the other breaths?

You open your mouth wider to take in

the horizon, the planets and the extra space

and you start to run

with your arms open in an embrace

and let the road slice through your guts.

I leave my face unshaved-
insolent silver needle tips defying through my olive skin pores-
to show that I don't care about this alien space.
I roll the very ends of my washed-out moustache
into two perfect semi-circles
all day long
and whisper verses under my teeth.

I'm broken in two.

One of my halves is nameless, a heavy mass in trance
buried permanently in a corduroy armchair, with my legs politely crossed,
and my gaze out, squinting behind a thick cigarette smoke, through the window
past the wide street and the square plaza facing the apartment I roam in,
past the Kentucky Fried Chicken and Costco and
alien silhouettes pushing shopping cards.
Past all those bizarre Lego bricks I look
to a place-intangible to you 
a place that floats and dwindles like my cigarette smoke
invisible quarter where my heart dangles, yearns
and where my other half dwells
this time, 
with a name.

You see my flaccid frame on the chair.
I'd die to have a name.
Don't ask me why I don't shave.

Palo Alto 
February 20, 2003