we slip out back doors in
        pairs of three and trios
              of seven.
                         we make our mark on the world,
                   so brightly-coloured but so
                         impermanent.
                                      the feet of passers-by
                                      kick up lung-coating clouds of
                                  our words. every day, we cough up
                                         more and more dust
                                         than we did the day before

                             (and then we trace designs
                                 in the residue on our windowpanes).


        baked baby-pink in the sun,
        our knobbling fingers stretch
                like aging dogs
                 over endless miles
                        of concrete and rhymes.

                yesterday, the immaculate
                   imperfection of our artistic marrow
                             still glared electric blue
                                beneath the streetlights

                        now we're touching the remains
                of episodic spiels
             eaten
                by the hem
                  of your jeans, and
                        the alley's strutting toms-

                        now we're choking back lines
                         of our powdery throes,
                             milk-eyed to tomorrow.


                         now, more than ever, we
                                    find ourselves tripping over
                                    words we once
                                thought simple and
                                      care-free,

                         words that we spat out
                            so casually
                         and let dance around our
                            callused and tan-lined toes,

           words like
                   "inspired"
               and "creativity"
               and "beauty"
               and "journal"
               and "walrus";

                         words like "chalk", "paintbrush", "song", "light", "catharsis".

                words we scrawled furiously
                        like frenzied, delicate historians
                words like:
                        elephants
                clawing
                        anastrophe
                rhythms
                        onto
         bureaucratic
                        oaths


                        words that, since we've grown
                                have settled
                                    into the grooves
                        of our tapping toes
                                (my, what colourful feet you have!)

        (all the better to educate you with, deary)


                                words that have settled

       like the fine sand that
            drips and melts to
                 the bottom of
                 the hourglass

                                into the crooks of our elbows,
                                     the fine hairs of the napes of our necks,    
                                behind our sweaty knees,
                                       our rapidly blinking eyelids,
                                       our sheet-covered couches,

                                onto the faded ghosts of bodies outlined on the driveway.


        they're rooted-
          gritty mud in the corners of our lips
              and the crooks of our tongues
              -the archaic lingerings
          of youthful exploration.