You can’t hang those outside our house, she said,
looking at the string of fifteen small flags
that I carefully unrolled and held out,
stretched to full arms length across my big chest –
it will look like an all-night Buddhist pub –
and everyone who passes by will stop
at all hours for a cup of jasmine tea;
or, she said low, those Monte Carlo boys
seeing blue and red colors in the breeze
will cross the street, seeing competition
for the mind-altering stuff they pander,
and maybe bust a cap in someone’s ass.
I laughed. The mind of a fifteen year old
is quite a strange place to visit, sometimes.
06 JUL 2003
