There’s a chair
for a writer who paints
And a table
for a chef who plays chess
A piano for an idiot
and poker for the queen
Flowers painting sidewalks
cement painting lawns
And a mandolin with
daisies plucking at the strings
The children in the streetlights
and musicians in a ballroom
White coats
splashed with blood and vomit
Yet the black
limousine is fit
for a surgical unit
Your finger runs and bleeds
like the bare feet
in a triathlon
And yet the meaningless
tears in the toddler’s eyes
are counted like stepping stones

Cripples carried,
but a half-dead man
sleeps an hour a week
A rainbow room
with meaningless
chords blasted in your eyes
While the same person
in a decade will adore
the flowers plucking away everything
A bright orange
mandolin will be smashed
between your heels
While the flute labeled “mandolin”
will be hung upon your door
And of course the
painted world of one
and a dust-kissed
world of another
The only difference
is the paper in their hands
Though you’ll say it’s the
mind in their head
And next door
there is a blind man
but you see another
you could never touch
But most of all you’ll see a
knife and a cup of bubbling blood
Where there is truly a hand
and a mandolin