Breathless

Breathless

After Godard


Deep in my chest
in my balloon pink lungs
little bronchiole trees
drop their fruit of oxygen
into a rushing bloodstream river

Lately, though those trees
bloom in bilious mucus
spring green in parallel
with the oak blossoming
in the frontyard
and all over town

Pollen deep on the cars each morning
enought to write my last will and testament
finger plowing over the sticky hood
and the conviction
that it just might be
my last willful act
if I understand such a scrawl

I walk through morning's green clouds
trying to be cool and nonchalant
suave as Jean-Paul Belmondo
hoping my lungs will open
like the door of a parked Citroen
with the keys left in the ignition

then roar down shady roads
flanked by trees in planted rows
shoot a hole in the sun
with the revolver from the glove compartment
let the light leak out
to make the pavement behind me shine.


W. Joe Hoppe

...............from his book GALVANIZED