On My Very Short Run from Mecca | Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Do not obscure Jude
do not fill mortar with ivy
let the cat hook its tail like walking
with an old man’s cane
through rainy parks named after
famous death,
sit blowing over coffee
like a reverse volcano,
your hand in the grip of the mug
plotting violent escapes.
Busy trombone voices around you
played out over a line of red swivel
stools by the cash,
tears in the fabric and you are thankful
you do not wear a watch,
a single blood poppy over mothy lapels
to remember the lifeless overturned flies
in the window,
the way Hardy sat at Cambridge
as though growing old in a bumper car
of forced intellectualism.
Wet newspaper overhead
you rush to hit the light,
ink running down your hands
the moral poverty of a
personal favela.