In all the vast Metropolis of Circles       you are given a pass       for one building
after waiting in a line-up        that stretches from Ugolino’s Meat Shop to
Bertrand’s Military Gear.        While others receive

promised tracts of Paradise    relaxing sabbaticals in Purgatory        you
are glad (you tell yourself)     to be allotted one cold cell         deep
in The Tower of Hunger.

Only when you finally arrive at the address (roughly scribbled on a shred of parchment)
you realise           there is no door into this establishment           just a million
tiny windows.      In the last light before the Apocalypse              you stand

beneath these walls          noting the MCXML carved into the closest sill
recalling childhood’s superhero dreams.

You were being charged with obstructing      the justice of doors.                 Doors
have rights          they told you                    doors must swing outward       freely
doors should live in gated communities        with other unimpeded doors and according
to Section 26      C.2         paragraph 18                line 4 of the Code of Rooms
the door must pursue its own happiness      according to both whims and the dictates
of its particular custom      religion       and creed.

Is this understood?
They let you go then           but where else were you to sleep but back on the stoop
of the world’s only building.           No one ever came out.
And no one ever went in.              Behind the glass, the sun sat in little bright knots
and you & the door rejoiced          by singing Etta James      under your breath
so the law                  wouldn’t hear you.

After 40 days in the desert,     this the first watering hole you see: Dante’s Diner
the sign reads      neon flicking a switchblade light over the pool of cement
at your feet.
What you started out wanting was a day’s pay for a day’s work    something simple
upstanding       and instead you got a crucifixion      maybe not today
not yet       but it’s been foretold, red tape & all      pauper’s grave, the whole bit
and now just the taste of a shake would be so good:
frosty cup, creamy-thick, one of those severed cherries on top.

But suddenly the sign snaps to off or perhaps there never really was a sign
(who can trust the sand in your mind
and you’re staring at The Ministry of Nails where God is only the setting sun
kept like an old bowling trophy behind glass in a retirement home
where somewhere in one of those barred rooms they’re playing pin
the resurrection on your palm filling out the order forms
for your stigmata.