Natural

Begin,

Begin by staring at the sun until your eyes go numb,

No wait! Don’t go away! You aren’t done yet.

They stare at the sun today, in half lidded shadows of leaf lined roofs and broken forest trunks,

They balk in echoes waiting for the trees to die and become concrete columns of pigeon shit,

Wait here with them while your eyes spill over in sick splashes of saline bubbles and globs,

Wait here with them as nature changes course and I start to worry about what’s natural.

Middle,

Middle of a house smelling of cramped air-conditioned air and mayo-smelling medicine,

He won’t say anything,

They took out his tongue,

Or did you do that?

He smiles sickly sweet on fresh wiped flesh ready for a break of the molten needle’s pain,

When it broke for him,

He nodded that it was fine,

See for now you live through him, and you’re not moving away!

Not

Moving

Anywhere

Anymore!

End,

End up in his beautiful language that you can get lost in,

High towers of steel caged glass and cutting black gravel,

He moved away from domestic murders and congesting subway systems,

He lives in olive green mud and air kissed stone where no one says hi,

His thoughts now focused on thinking future things through under lines of pressure with Dad,

Set now against plugged up holes of ozone smiles and puppet strings he wonders,

How can he be natural if he is surrounded on all sides by the unnatural?

He will try to be there for you,

To come to you,

To smother you in love the same way you have draped yourself in the pavement’s blank pages,

Sit with him as silt runs across his feet and rocks dig into his pores,

Let him be there with you as sex enters your minds,

Let him end with you here as you bloom together,

End with him saying nothing, staring at the sun until both pairs of eyes are naturally numb.

I.J Steinberg