The Carbon Baron

the milky fog of morning coffee lifts by midday with a copy
of the newspaper and its fine black soot, while a canopy of rough leaves
and smoke, heavy and particulate, settles on your brow.
you know that the sulphur of exhale will never be clean,

but unlike nearly everyone of whom that is true, unlike nearly everyone
for whom the answer is to cut and divide and piece back
what we can't face now, for you there is the green Appalachia, the verdant coast,
the muddied garden path past what you understand.

those black, coagulated lumps and the complete silence
of pure commerce are one and the same, past now, this city, all cities.

/

what do we owe to those yellow tabs we left for ourselves
in book after book? what do we owe to those selves,
painstakingly noting some nuance in the margins.

it's the same debt i tried to pay to the city, tossing my hair, quickening my steps.
tonight, i know it is raining outside without having to look out my window, because
the sound of cars on pavement is slick with wetness.
you are here, mining past layers of oily carbon deposits, falling
asleep in rickety carts, dreaming of some final cigarette.

when you go i will miss you.

/

i will find you again, of course, like that piece of coal i have from the Titanic,
retrieved from the ocean floor, sold as a souvenir. somewhere among the tracks and
power lines that you are navigating, there is blood waiting
to be let, simmering, a bleeding heart pounding to endow then conquer.