Two Things Can Be True
Time Is Never Time At All
Concrete
Look how dandelions crack through
sidewalk seams, defiant as teenage rebellion,
yellow-headed and screaming life
into the gray mathematics of concrete.
I’ve seen sparrows build penthouses
in broken air conditioners,
a blueprint with no permit,
their zoning violations
are songs at dawn.
The homeless man on Ventura
grows tomatoes in stolen milk crates,
feeds them coffee grounds from corporate cups;
even capitalism’s leftovers
can birth something red and real.
We are all just finding ways
to photosynthesize fluorescent light,
to turn steam grates into summer breeze.
Every morning the city tries to erase us
with its power washer prophecies,
its tickets and citations,
but we persist like rust on chains,
like moss between bricks,
like prayers spray-painted
on condemned buildings:
still here still here still here
until the walls themselves believe it.
