So if you choose to race a penny
off the roof of the Empire State Building
but you’re aiming at this particular spot
on the street corner where a woman
is hailing a taxi and right as it kisses
the curb your body plummets through
the canopy of the cab, crushing the
cabbie and screwing the woman’s
doctors appointment which she can’t
make up because she manages a pub
six days a week to provide for two
daughters and her husband can’t work
because he broke his back and rouses
only for OxyContin, so she’s spread
thin and suffering headaches but
finally bought some free time on
her doctor’s busy schedule and nearly
made her appointment, almost found
out she needs treatment and that her
headaches aren’t migraines or
work or stress or kids—it’s cancer
forming in her brain stemming from
a dog-shit roll of genetics, now, if
she had hooked the cabbie, swam
upstream through traffic, hit every
green light, avoided construction
on 56^th and 8^th Avenue she would’ve
arrived two minutes early, tipped
the cabbie, shot out of the car, gotten
tested, treated and maybe lived or
maybe not, but now we’ll never know
because you chose to race a penny
off the roof of the Empire State
Building, killed a cabbie, made
a woman miss her doctors appointment
now all three of you are buried and
rotting and I wish nobody ever
died and everyone smiled at
everybody else or cackled or howled
or ripped a hole through the universe
to make themselves happier, and I
wish you would scoot a little closer
or just stroll beside me as we fritter
away the hours falling around us
like feathers or pennies oh
please do anything but jump.

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