Generic

I am neither excitable or excited,
the doctor looks at me and blinks,
and I have listened to promises
of a few men wanting to kill me
and some women whispering sweet death

They have talked to me of
accent and frame
of quiet steps and every bright eye
of names and numbers
and I just look and blink

You have mentioned Dakota and the coast
and I misheard as a smile
"decoder" - the imperfect homonym,
the slip cognate, pragmatic ignorance
and our welcomes

We tread on spans of childish balance beams
and pronounce our macaronics
the words of foreign languages
with respect and grasping hope
and an auteur is but someone who has
no accomplices and the willingness of peripherals

and me? To mould this perspective
erroneous yet the cough of everyday
streets, of context and the mediocre indifference
that the young know so well and that the old have
known so well for longer.