He holds things, and he drops things,
things to be found, usually, to be picked up and confused over.
But some just manage to get themselves lost
in a permanent sort of way,
lost in storm drains and airplane bathrooms
in broom cupboards and subway station stairwells
The things he holds, he shows the world,
woven into the empty spaces where his
shopping cart isn't,
each hole a home for tennis balls and
empty doll heads with vacant eyes,
hair cut short and inked purple;
Borneo in miniature soon traded for others:
prosthetics and impresarios left for dead,
gargoyled brooches in bas relief and
floating on a sea of numbers.
The things he drops
go on to live on mantels
or hang from mirrors,
their lease renewed for another year,
a teasing shadow of their former selves.
The rest, the mundane, he collects;
He burns our sins for warmth on winter nights.