StarCat/CatStar

y the minutiae of bureaucracy.
It is the slaughtered conscience of ironed out kinks.
It is the ensnarement of dreams.
Benjamin Lazarus apprehends me in the street
to smack me out of the anesthetizing gambit
of myopic derealization.
He wants the time.
He tells me that every eight days
twelve looks like eighteen
and sends me on my way.
My Eureka! moment appears before
me in a Yomiuri Giants
jersey and toenail polish
alternating in coats of orange and brown.
Orange, brown, orange, brown.
I meander away in warm-necked buzz,
Aquarian pets sporting plastic bottles
of unsweetened green tea
strapped to their necks float by.
I never saw them tossed from passing cars.
I never saw them.
A can clinked from a bicycle
into the time travel light tunnel
emptying into the salty-teared
massif-forsaken basin.
I never knew they swam not for me.
They swam. Not for me.