Salvador to Lapaz
From sealed bus windows the derelict cannot lick you,
and you find yourself in Salvador,
five hands in your pockets,
only one your own.
Desperation swarms to you,
in the city at polar ends with its beginning.
So we suck ourselves back to seventh floor balconies,
and dream their open hands, hollow eyes, and the place it once was.
A place where a leather-tin man was once-a-walking,
his only vocal, his leather-tin.
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You sleep forward now,
grinding and shaking into town,
miles from where the train guard threw your cervaja out the window,
as if the hills could open it, sip it,
to a high walled un-hostile hostel.
A salad of once scattered fruits.
The Latvian in the tracksuit who cannot stop to breathe it in,
the stoner from Bristol - a cartoon who shares our puff.
The German girl who limps and the French that do not smile,
all stay here for a while.
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