JP in Kosovo

the promise wrangles itself from failure-

there's no mistaking the spiders of

diplomacy weaving their skillful way home

and here in this mountain-home, he sits

by the window and watches the sky ready

itself for rain. outside, someone is yelling

someone is always yelling in every corner

of the world, he feels the words the way dust

clings to his boots, the way his pants crease

and when he empties out his pockets, all

currency floods home, all remembrance

forgotten in another flight along the

fault-line of time zones. someone is yelling here,

a language he will never know, will never

question, and there is faint tinny whisper

of faraway music and there is a bird singing and

there is a plane taking off and what he cannot

make anybody understand is that

when you get right down to it,

nothing much happens anywhere,

except all the usual tragedy implicit

in waking. in living.