The Couriers

We were delivery boys

made men

gripping permission

with privilege to hover.

We biked between

the lines of the living

and the legal.

With every pedal,

we’d bend mortal men’s physics.

Traffic’s laws never applied to us –

the road paint only confined

in white and yellow,

but we thrived in grey.

We were boundless, weightless,

limitless,

until one of us was hit,

when gravity smashed back

and we returned to being

breathless.

***

I can see you now

amidst the flashing lights

grinding gears uphill

through the snow,

the storms, the sweat.

You are splattered in city.

Break grease tattoos

on the back of your palms.

Crank and chain frayed jeans

drag inches behind you,

hold on so desperately

to their thinning threads of life.

***

Long after I’ve quit your post,

I still street-spot the others of us,

the matching, bleeding cracks

of our dried knuckles.

Still hear the manager’s

match-tip anger ignite

with only a second’s strike.

We were just ones of hundreds –

carrier pigeons on wheels –

and if we couldn’t fly fast enough,

he would hail another

to fool-flutter in,

always happy to take

someone’s crumbs

for the simple sweet

of feigned freedom.