Signs of Slowing

The way we see it’s not a right, it’s a privilege.

To run the world based on whims,

systematically looking forward with ears to the ground

breaking a skull and opening a fracture

spreading contusions like a current 

across a handful of years stretching back and forward 

claiming soft surfaces and stripping away the details

leaving a streak of infected flesh.

Too shy to come out breathing

A broke baby, odd and undersized

the claim of predators, playing at mother 

luring, leaving trails of cheerios.

Swallow and go.

With no signs of slowing

Unnerving, the blistering intake of breath without air;

the consolation parachute

for an infant gaining speed losing altitude,

scared of being hampered by the fickle ground or

of landing in the secret core of a resurrection below

raised up briefly by a revelation learned from the

aging, chain-smoking, Arizona-raised Puerto Rican

given to him by spending time with someone else

accused of cancer, another victim of circumstance

another ostracized mentor with an absent mother in a dense tangle of crises 

because how it works wasn’t working

If I can just get through this,

I’ll quit for good.