MONEY IS HORRIBLE, a bandage where
there should be a hand, and heart's engine
runs beat to daybreak. Money
and hands call to each other like
children at a pool; like this money
gathering noon into meadow.
It rains and rains. What is sleeping,
the mayor asks and asks.
What is a structure? The mayor
is named Mayor Mike McGinn
and he has made mistakes, asking
the people in the street the wrong
questions about their umbrellas:
is that your house? Where is your house?
What does it mean "to camp?"
Is sleeping political speech?
If money is political speech,
what isn't political speech?
Currencies: the arrival of their shadows
is the movement of obsession
navigating the aerial and the snag
persistent as grief or brief as crush
they hop forward or gleam rat-sleek
through territory they only sort and take.
What is and isn't money?
Many have been sleeping in money.
The money is congregating in the street.
Mayor Mike McGinn asks the money
what it wants and it says more money
and for the street to fall
back into its sleep. When police
shoot woodcarvers, sleep gets harder.
When protesters smash storefronts,
money wakes up more mayors.
Debate is the heart of this body
we make. But there is also the pleasure