Anomie Can Be Defined As . . .

At that late hour, the streets were quite deserted. I wandered along in a kind of amnesic daze. Somehow I’d gotten lost in a part of town I thought I knew well. I didn’t recognize the faces of buildings or the signs on storefronts. Familiar landmarks had simply disappeared. My own footfalls sounded weirdly detached from me. After only thirty minutes of this, I felt as though I’d been running falling flying floating crawling half the night. I sat down on the curb exhausted. Early morning clouds shaped like vague suspicions of vast conspiracies were just starting to pinken.

Lyric

Sometimes my heart is a crime wave, sometimes a tortured rhyme, sometimes a disturbing dream plagiarized from the day’s events. Other times it’s mostly sand and rock, like the unwanted land to which the original Americans were condemned, or a dirty white van with caged dogs to be put down whimpering in the back. But today, tonight, my heart is a harp hung on a tree, and you the impossible notes that random breezes play on the strings.

Howie Good's latest poetry book is The Horses Were Beautiful, available from Grey Book Press.