First & Last

The leap itself isn’t fatal
it’s the sudden stop & the misty pavement
opening up to swallow or absorb the step
like building a scale replica of the Dalai Lama
in a bottle
as if your lips were bait & infinity was a
1, 2, 3 wipeout

I imagine life’s just the skeleton of a comic book
the Iliad & the Odyssey with lots of crash, thud,
ka-booms & dialog balloons stuffed with
those dactylic hexameters that still ring like
stones in the sun

but bleached blonde with liquid eyes
outsourced to California
where the shoreline has a memory that’s
always going to be deeper than
the history book you lost in high school

or that dry dive into the abyss when
no one’s looking