(in revision/progress)

Our building awakes
shortly before lunchtime,
like a soporific volcano
roused from its latest siesta.

Earlier, we are waiting for coffee,
hands on our hips;
looking our computer screens
straight in the eye.

At its apogee, we fail to trust
our unsteady limbs, racing hearts.
Till turmoil erupts in the fish-tank,
water swaying apologetically.

We know to blame Richter scales,
disasters in a nearby country,
but find no scapegoat
for our reluctant panic.

We stand by the elevator, Michael and I,
while everybody races downstairs.
My knees ache and he doesn't care
if he dies.

We don't speak as the doors close on us,
our lives encased in metal and plywood;
ambivalent to the possibility
of not re-emerging.

(in revision/progress)

Sixty days since you broke the news,
and no reporters struggled to fix it.
That's sixty days of one headline
patterning my corneas --
two months of weathermen
predicting showers of new lovers
in the resigned face of thunderstorms.

I stopped reading football sections,
offended by players imitating embraces
on overexposed fields, creased, smiling.
Gave up economic reviews, calculating only loss.
Instead I bought a van; learned to drive,
tailed the paparazzi behind you.
As the air buzzed with my illiteracy,
I kept bundles of tabloids
only to stain my palms with ink
running them over your printed name.