i draw a picture of
tomorrow morning:
a man in a silver box sells
75 cent coffee and bad bagels.
his shirt is the kind of blue no one ever
tried to name a crayon after.
dust-plastic blue,
tried to love you
(couldn't)
blue.
and the morning is that same color,
the color of canned lightning-bugs and
unfiltered cigarettes and desire,
because that is all you
draw with couldn't blue.
i pay him 1.25 in change and purse-lint
so that a fourth-world factory can make more
silver boxes to sell more things
more stale blueberry muffins.
and he will keep gathering change
in 75 cent purse-lint increments
in the small sinking townships of
all the couldn't blue mornings.
and he will keep gathering the
ugly colors of
another side of desire
and he will wear those colors
on a shirt
those colors no one
liked enough
to name.





