I have no idea what rain feels like.

Maybe a blue wrecking ball crashing

through a perfectly white wall?

Or a translucent canary, pecking

a thousand shoulders all at once?

Life is quiet most of the time.

The alphabets hung on the wall

of preschools conspire with sea clams

snapping their mouths shut to form

sign & signified; to create a theory

of inherent meaning which claims

we’re more valuable than the clams

themselves, but less than sea turtles

whose lives extend onward for eternity

or are snuffed out instantly. They die

all the time, like people,

and we just keep walking through

grocery stores, hotel lobbies, sex shops,

thinking this is how it is.