One more strange one.

Meanwhile, the Edinburgh Man…

Somewhere near Edinburgh, awash in terrible outbursts,
an emotional whale of a man blows up balloons and pretends
that everything is alright, that all clouds pretend to be grey
but are really shot through with silver, a mine’s worth,
the ore insubstantial but gleaming in the old clockwork sun
meandering through the sky and missing the Egyptians
who knew how to fucking worship, not these pretenders
with their crosses and rosaries and trips to Medjugorje—

so the Edinburgh man thinks along with mapping
and remapping the paths that led him to such a low end,
the fights and washed-up pub mates scrambling eggs
in hard shafts of lights, heads still on fire, guts churning,
replaying scenes of ugly, needled-up sex in roached flats,
pretending that everything would work out smooth
as a mother’s voice, but the right kind of mother, not theirs,
not his, still clamoring from the grave, praying and cursing.